Entrepreneurial and Managerial Experience Matter for Startups operate in an Academic Incubator

Abstract

A founding team’s prior experience shapes the types of skills and learning path it engages with when forming its startup. Prior entrepreneurial experience enhances exploration of new knowledge and testing of current assumptions, because founders understand that their previously-obtained information may not be relevant to the current endeavor. Prior managerial experience encourages the exploitation of said information and it is reuse in an inappropriate way or context when trying to duplicate familiar routines. Based on 75 startups operating in the Harvard Innovation Lab, we find that managerial experience negatively affects survival while entrepreneurial experience does not exert a significant positive influence on it. The incubator’s intangible resource, its mentoring program, moderates the negative relationship between the team’s prior managerial experience and the startup’s survival. We also find that mentoring strengthens the positive association of entrepreneurial experience and startup survival.