Database, Methodological Tools, and Research Opportunities: Creative Destruction Lab and Early-Stage Technology Ventures

Amir Sariri, Evgenia Gatov, Geneva Neal, Kyle Robinson, Sonia Sennik, Wei Yang Tham, Michael Vertolli and Avi Goldfarb

No 34127, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We introduce a new dataset built from a global non-profit startup program for early-stage high-technology startups called Creative Destruction Lab (CDL). The early stages of startup formation remain one of the least understood aspects of firm growth. The nature of this program and the data collected from its operations are well suited to investigate open questions in entrepreneurial strategy, entrepreneurial finance, advice, and technology transfer. This dataset combines three critical features for rigorous empirical research. First, the large, multi-year sample includes roughly 15,000 applicants, 9,000 founders in admitted startups, and nearly 2,000 mentors. Second, CDL recognized the academic value from the outset and built enterprise IT linking venture-level characteristics, structured longitudinal records of firm development and operations, and unstructured verbatim transcripts of mentor–founder discussions. Third, the data cover 27 technological domains such as therapeutics and quantum computing. This paper provides an overview of the setting from which data is collected, a high-level description of available data, and information on how to access these data for research.

JEL-codes: G24 L26 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-sbm
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34127.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34127

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34127
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().