The Fragile Success of Team Start-ups

Veronique Schutjens and Erik Stam

Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy from Max Planck Institute of Economics, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group

Abstract: This article describes the benefits and pitfalls of starting a firm with an entrepreneurial team, drawing on a longitudinal empirical analysis of the life course of 90 team start-ups and 1196 solo start-ups in the Netherlands. In the first three years of their existence, team start-ups perform better than solo start-ups on several success indicators. However, after this start phase, entrepreneurial teams face particular problems in realizing further growth. These team-specific bottlenecks can even threaten firm survival. In later life course phases we found a clear distinction between entrepreneurial teams with stagnating growth and teams that succeeded in solving these problems and went on to realize further growth.

Keywords: entrepreneurial teams; start-ups; firm growth; life course analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D23 D74 D92 L25 M13 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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