“…We begin to address the impacts of unobserved selection into VC‐funding by using a matching approach to identify similar control firms (i.e., non‐VC‐backed ventures) for each VC‐backed venture. Like several other scholars, we implement a CEM approach to reduce imbalance in observable differences between treated and control groups (e.g., Aggarwal & Hsu, ; De Figueiredo, Meyer‐Doyle, & Rawley, ; Singh & Agrawal, ) . Consistent with previous research on technology ventures, we matched firms by selecting innovative productivity, founding year, and geographical location as matching criteria (Aggarwal & Hsu, ; Fitza et al, ; Hsu, ; Pahnke, Katila, & Eisenhardt, ).…”