Venture capital and private equity research has grown considerably in
recent times with a heterogenous set of themes being explored. Using a
large corpus from the Web of Science, this study used bibliometric
analysis to present a comprehensive encapsulation of the fields'
geographical focus, methodological choices, prominent themes, and future
research directions. Noteworthily, the foundational themes in venture
capital research are adoption and financing processes, venture capital
roles in business, governance, syndication, and the creation of public
organizations. In private equity research, style drift into venture
capital emerges as a key theme alongside buyouts and privatization, and
valuation and performance.