Venture capital plays an important role during a start-up's development from a new venture to a mature company. The objective of this thesis was to review existing literature on venture capital decision-making criteria, add a new theory called effectuation, i.e. the process of non-predictive reasoning, to the VC decision-making process and transfer findings from previous studies with entrepreneurs and business angels to the context of the formal venture capital industry. Within formal VC, special attention was given to the renewable energy domain. Thereby, the research focused on the effects...