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This article analyses whether and how the impact of publicly backed venture capital (VC) funds varies across regions, depending on their level of innovation intensity and in comparison with private VC funds. Building on agency and human capital theories, the authors distinguish public VC funds into regional and governmental types, to assess potential differences in the performance of their portfolio companies. The analyses rely on a sample of 628 VC-backed companies in the United Kingdom during 1998–2007, and they confirm that regional characteristics matter for rigorous assessments of the effectiveness of public VC programmes.