Linking types of ICT entrepreneurs to new firm survival

Abstract

We focus on the information and communication technology sector to verify links between founder profiles and outcomes. Using logistic regressions, this paper aims to detect differences among a pre-identified four-group typology of entrepreneurs. We find that these profiles differ strongly in terms of survival and observe unexpected human capital effects on firm survival. Findings reveal negative effects of opportunity costs, negative or not significant results of industry and management experience, and no effects of entrepreneurship capital and preparation. We find that a critical firm size is required to enable entrepreneurial learning in organisations. In addition, we confirm that commonly observed effects do not automatically hold in specific contexts. We observe primarily positive moderating effects of factors, compensating a lack of assets attributed to successful new firm performance in the literature. Our results are relevant for entrepreneurship policy to pick winners and to identify risk takers.