Creative industries have been acknowledged as the key driver of economic growth and capital investment is the fundamental component to develop businesses in creative industries. In practice, there are institutional sources of capital investment to seek, such as banks and venture capitalist. However, in fact, they tend to be difficult for businesses in creative industries to access for fund; especially for start-up, young companies due to the barriers of evaluating the potential of intangible products and services; formal investment procedures and requirements. On the other hand, business angels tend to invest in start-up businesses and those intangible knowledge-based businesses which are avoided by the formal investment institutions. The study aims to illustrate the capital investment decision for start-up businesses from the business angels’ perspective. Furthermore, this study intends to reveal the underlying factors of capital investment decision and outline the capital investment phenomena in creative industries, taking visual arts as a case.
This study combined qualitative (in-depth interview) and quantitative method (survey) to investigate business angels’ capital investment decision in the core creative industries. There were in total 159 valid responses from the survey. The quantitative results were confirmed by interviews with business angels.
The important findings of this study are as follow: 1) four capital investment decision criteria from the business angels’ perspective were identified – the artist’s passion, trustworthiness, creativity, and marketability; 2) the capital investment decision criteria were found to have positive relationships to business angels’ perception on the potential benefits they will receive; 3) a strong and significant relationship was found between investor’s benefits and willingness to invest, with stronger influence from financial benefits than strategic benefits; 4) business angels’ knowledge and familiarity to the industry was found to influence their evaluation process.
This study was one of the first attempts to formulate the capital investment decision criteria for business start-ups in the core creative industries, taking the business angels’ perspective on visual arts. The findings were hoped to bring a holistic view and bridge the gap between artists and business angels.

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