Abstract: Drawing upon the venture capital funds established in 2007-2011, this paper empirically tests how the working background of funds’ executive partners influences the return performance of venture capital funds. We find that the government work experience, financial industry related work experience and direct-VC or asset management experience of funds’ executive partners have a positive impact on the proportion of project exit. However, only government work experience significantly increases the IPO proportion. After further distinguishing the listing venue, we find that financial work experience leads to a larger proportion of portfolio firms that get listed overseas. These findings comprehensively show how venture capital fund managers help with portfolio firms. We further classify venture capital funds according to whether or not they have a government-guided fund as partner, and find that the background of working in government has a greater impact on the performance of ordinary private funds, while financial experience has a significant positive impact on the exit performance of both types of funds.

Key words: venture capital, management firm, executive partners, working experience