El préstamo participativo, ¿tiene el mismo impacto que el capital riesgo en el crecimiento de la pequeña y mediana empresa?

Participating loans and venture capital are different in nature. While the former are resources that belong to others, venture capital is one's own equity. However, professionals in both sectors find no differences between these two instruments in terms of quality.

In order to back up this viewpoint in quantitative terms, this research performs a comparative statistical analysis of the effect that each of these resources has on eleven variables representing business growth. The ultimate goal is to determine any possible analogies between the impact that participating loans and venture capital have on small and medium enterprises (SME) growth.

The results obtained in this study show that these instruments act as leverage, in a similar way, in the development of the firms that provide the financing. This conclusion is of interest to public organisations and their policies aimed at supporting SMEs, as well as to venture capital firms in terms of the design of their investment packages and, finally, to business people for making decisions regarding their development plans.