Design and Evaluation of a Conversational Agent for Enhancing Entrepreneur’s Negotiation Skills in Venture Capital Term Sheet Negotiations

Abstract

Venture capital term sheet negotiations play a crucial role in the success of entrepreneurial ventures, underscoring the importance of entrepreneurs’ negotiation skills in this context. While conversational agents hold significant potential for training these skills, academic literature and practical applications lack a comprehensive approach in principles and evidence for a conversational agent tailored to this purpose. To address these gaps, the thesis employed the design science research approach to develop and evaluate a conversational agent that aids entrepreneurs in enhancing their negotiation skills for venture capital term sheet negotiations. The evaluation results support the overall suitability of the proposed mockup prototype and its design principles from the entrepreneurs’ perspective, making a valuable contribution to both research on entrepreneurial education and technology-mediated negotiation training.