Using weighted k-means to identify Chinese leading venture capital firms incorporating with centrality measures

Highlights：

• Despite the importance of identifying leading VCs, this research topic is rarely mentioned in the relevant literature. As we know, this paper is the first study to identify leading VCs.

• This paper incorporates with several different centrality measures of co-investment network of VCs, and then proposes a new approach based on the weighted k-means to rank VCs at both group and individual levels and identify the leading VCs.

• The approach not only shows alternative groupings based on multiple evaluation criteria, but also ranks them according to their comprehensive score which is the weighted sum of these criteria.

• Empirical analysis shows the efficiency and practicability of the proposed approach to identify leading Chinese VCs. It indicates that the proposed method is worth considering, especially as is helpful for social scientists to understand leading VCs based on the results of analyzing historical data of investment events.

摘要

•Despite the importance of identifying leading VCs, this research topic is rarely mentioned in the relevant literature. As we know, this paper is the first study to identify leading VCs.•This paper incorporates with several different centrality measures of co-investment network of VCs, and then proposes a new approach based on the weighted k-means to rank VCs at both group and individual levels and identify the leading VCs.•The approach not only shows alternative groupings based on multiple evaluation criteria, but also ranks them according to their comprehensive score which is the weighted sum of these criteria.•Empirical analysis shows the efficiency and practicability of the proposed approach to identify leading Chinese VCs. It indicates that the proposed method is worth considering, especially as is helpful for social scientists to understand leading VCs based on the results of analyzing historical data of investment events.