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The first communication an entrepreneur often has with a potential investor is submitting a one-page executive summary for consideration. Subsequently, the potential investor or investment group chooses which venture ideas to further consider by inviting a pitch deck or an actual business pitch. This investment funnel is competitive and, accordingly, anything we as scholars can share with entrepreneurs seeking advice about how to optimize that initial executive summary to increase chances of getting to the pitch would be immensely valuable. Unfortunately, scant research has focused on this opportunity-introduction stage, and there is precious little we can prescribe for entrepreneurs seeking investment. To address this, we developed four executive summaries that varied only in the type of capital mentioned. We found that executive summaries that mentioned human capital more prominently were viewed as more cognitively legitimate and as deserving of a higher opportunity-recognition valuation. Put succinctly, consistent both with our theorized findings from our Open Science Framework preregistered experiment (N Z 367) and with our qualitative follow-up study, we found that human capital signals have a greater positive influence on potential investors' decisions relative to social capital, intellectual capital, and financial capital. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of this novel insight and include prescriptive recommendations for entrepreneurs.

Prepandemic, small business exits were expected to increase dramatically owing to pent-up supply and the aging business owner population. COVID-19 may have dampened those expectations because of increasing information asymmetries that limited selling options for the small business owner (SBO). SBOs exit for many reasons (e.g., illness, family, retirement), so postponing a sale may not be a viable option. Alternately, SBOs can absorb crisis uncertainty by accepting different deal terms. We propose that one such strategy is to include seller financing as part of the deal terms, thereby signaling to the acquirer the SBOs' confidence that the purchase is sound. We examine the results of 1,909 exit transactions from both before and after the financial crisis of 2007--2009 and over a 10-year postcrisis horizon. We find that sellers accept a lower price and less favorable terms with increased seller financing in the 24 months postcrisis, and that waiting longer to sell after the crisis improves deal terms for sellers, as this affords SBOs time to exit. Additionally, reduced information asymmetry improves deal terms. Finally, we provide strategies for SBOs to lower information asymmetry in small business exits.