Research on the Usefulness of Start-Up Supports

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate relationships between performances of start-ups and external supports to them. For the analysis, we used a questionnaire survey with responses from 2,897 start-ups (as of the 1st survey). As the analysis means, we adopted propensity score matching, which is one of the causal inference methods. First, after categorizing external supports and performances, and examining the effect of each support, only consulting information support was found to contribute to some performance improvement. Next, when we examined some external supports in combination with other supports, new causal effects such as significant growth in sales were confirmed by combining non-public and public funding supports. These results suggest the potential for contributing to the performances by the proper combination of these supports, considering the characteristics of each type of external support.