Roham Rezaei

I am a PhD student in Finance at UNSW, Sydney, Australia. I will be on the 25-26 academic job market. My research interests are entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and innovation. Please feel free to contact me at: r.rezaei@unsw.edu.au

My advisors are Ron Masulis and Jason Zein.

I co-organize the student-led Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation.

I visited Duke's Fuqua School of Business under the supervision of David Robinson, and Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business under the supervision of Gordon Phillips in 2023.

Please scroll down to see my research.

PUBLICATIONS

Venture Capitalists vs. Deep-Pocketed Incumbents: Startup Financing Strategies in the Presence of Competitive Threats, Review of Finance (Special Issue on Finance and Product Markets), Forthcoming
with Peter Pham and Jason Zein

Presentations: EFA (2022), CICF (2022), SFS Cavalcade Asia-Pacific (2022), WEFI (2022), FMA (2022), FIRN (2022), FMA Asia Pacific (2022), FMCG (2022)

We examine how venture capitalists (VCs) adapt their financing strategies when investing in startups that compete against deep-pocketed incumbents. Employing textual analysis to identify a startup's potential competitors, we show that when competitors are cash-rich, VCs deploy a financing strategy characterized by less conditionality, as observed through larger, less frequent funding rounds that are less contingent on short-term performance. This strategy requires VCs to rely more on continuous monitoring and liquidation protection, and is restricted to larger funds with specialized experience. Our results highlight that product market competition plays an important role in explaining VC financial contracting choices.

WORKING PAPERS
(including scheduled; * : presentation by coauthor)

Government-Backed Science and Venture Capital (Job Market Paper)
with Yufeng Yao

Presentations: SFS Cavalcade North America (2025), AFA (2025), Columbia Private Equity Research (2025), ABFER (2025), ACFOW (2024), CICF (2025), FOM (2024), EUROFIDAI-ESSEC Paris December Finance Meeting* (2024), Monash Winter Finance (2025), UNSW
Summary at ABFER Digest

We study whether government investment in basic science stimulates private investment in entrepreneurship. Our difference-in-differences setting examines the impact of the BRAIN Initiative (BI)---a coordinated federal investment program to map the human brain---on venture capital activity. We find that the BI increased both the probability and size of VC funding in neurotechnology ventures, with stronger effects for startups directly linked to BI. Neurotech startups also changed fundamentally: they were more likely to hire academics, file patents, and integrate complementary technologies like AI. Our findings suggest that government-backed science, as a public good, alleviates funding frictions in emerging technologies.