Venture Capital Initiatives in Macedonia: Current Situation, Barriers and Perspectives

Abstract

Some evidences show that investing in the equity of companies begun during the Roman Empire (Caselli 2010, p. 3), which mean that the idea of investing capital in risky businesses and seeking sources of capital is not new. Further in the fifteenth century explorers – advеnturers to sail around the world looking for a big wealth in exotic locations was needed to find financial resources from someone. Using their connections with the king or queen they came to the appropriate financial means for realization of their goals. It can be stated that the first venture capitalist was the Spanish Queen Isabella, who invested in its well-known entrepreneur Christopher Colombo for various researches and searching for new places (Hill and Power 2001). In the nineteenth century a large number of wealthy individuals and families financially helped researchers of new technologies. Immediately after The World War II, in 1946 was formed the first venture capital fund, American Research Development Corporation, which initially invested in new companies with great growth potential, mainly composed by soldiers returning from the war, and later it invested in other businesses types as well (Ibanez 1989). It is assumed that the term “venture capital”, for the first time is mentioned by Jean Сarter Witter in 1939 in an open forum at Convention of Associations of Investment banks of United States of America, and since then venture capital began to be considered as a particular source of financing small and medium enterprises (Kenney 2000). The term “venture capital” derives from the nature and characteristics of investment projects in which the capital is invested. Because the bulk of investment projects are characterized by a high degree of risk and the capital invested in them is qualified as “risky.” (Gladstone and Gladstone 2002; Ramadani and Gerguri 2011).