The amount of public money invested in the venture capital industry has increased sub-stantially over the last few decades. The goal is, in general, to facilitate growth in highly in-novative small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by securing their supply of capital in early stages. Hence, an important aspect of the effectiveness of public investment is wheth-er it increases the investees’ ability to attract additional funding. The process through which public investments can contribute to a better supply of capital to SMEs by more than just their own investment is commonly known as the catalysing or leverage effect of public in-vestment.

In order to increase understanding of how this effect can be maximized, this study com-pares the amount of capital attracted to Swedish SMEs as a result of public fund-of-fund (FoF) investment to that of direct public investments.

This study shows that:

- FoFs are more effective in increasing the capital supply to SMEs in the market.

- Public investments have a higher catalysing effect on the fund level than on the enterprise level. Hence, EUR 1 invested at the fund level has a larger positive impact for SMEs than EUR 1 invested at the enterprise level.

- The investment quality of private venture capital (VC) investments is generally higher than that of direct public investments. Hence, FoFs allows public inves-tors to "free ride" on the skills of private VCs rather than setting up own struc-tures.