Welcome to my website. I am a PhD candidate at EPFL (Swiss Finance Institute).

I am on the finance job market during the 2025-26 academic year.

My main research interests are venture capital, private equity, and applied machine learning. 

Broadly, I am interested in studying:

• The functioning of alternative markets and startup financing mechanisms, such as private secondary markets and crowdfunding platforms.

• Machine learning applications to predict investment returns and perform causal inference.

• The sources of skill and performance among venture capital investors.

• Investment strategies in private markets. 

View / Download CV

Email: luiz.bissoto@epfl.ch

Phone: +41 (0) 797 186 572

Private Listings and Their Consequences for Startups: Evidence from Private Secondary Markets

• Why do startups increasingly choose to trade on private secondary markets (PSMs)? I examine the trade-offs associated with this decision and the characteristics of startups trading on PSMs. Using a recent regulatory change that expanded investor access to PSMs and drawing on novel startup share price data, I show that PSM-listed startups face higher fundraising uncertainty and typically experience declining share prices once listed. My results reveal a risk-return trade-off, in which startups accept increased financing risk for higher returns when fundraising succeeds and broad stock markets are supportive, benefiting from price discovery without foregoing private status.

Presentations: FMA Annual Meeting (Doctoral Student Consortium and Special PhD Paper Presentation) (2025), UZH Rising Scholar Conference in Finance (2025), Dauphine Finance PhD Workshop (2025), SFI Research Days (2025), EPFL-UNIL PhD Workshop (2024, 2025)

Venture Selection Via Machine Learning

• Standard machine learning algorithms can significantly improve the selection of successful startups. This improvement does not come at the expense of missing out on highly successful startups, and is robust to forward-looking and selection bias. I provide evidence that "AI-empowered" firms actively use these technologies, contributing to a decline in predictability and rationalizing the existence of these potential gains.

Presentations: EPFL-UNIL PhD Workshop (2024), SFI Research Days (2024), 9th Annual Cambridge Conference on Alternative Finance (2024), World Finance Conference (2024)

The Role of Institutional Venture Capital Firms in Startup Success

• Institutional Venture Capital (IVC) Firms specifically are responsible for most of the successful outcomes in the U.S. VC market, with a distinct (separable) and incremental (positive) effect toward success.

Presentations: EPFL-UNIL PhD Workshop (2023), Junior Academics Research Seminars (JARS) (2024)