Founder nativity, founding team formation, and firm performance in the U.S. high-tech sector

Abstract

This paper is motivated by the movement of foreign-born entrepreneurs out of ethnic enclaves and into the mainstream, globally-connected economies of the countries of immigration, and from necessity to opportunity entrepreneurship. The theoretical contribution of the paper is to integrate the emerging literature on foreign-born entrepreneurship with work on the composition and impact of founding teams. Empirically, we draw on original quantitative and qualitative data on the U.S. high-tech sector. We find that homophily drives team formation and that nationality diversity in founding teams has a modest impact on firm performance.