Start-Up Templates and Nascent Entrepreneurship Among Women

Abstract

In under-developed contexts, women’s choice of engaging in entrepreneurial activity is constrained due to limited access to knowledge about entrepreneurship processes. We find that start-up templates, defined as codified series of prototypical founding tasks, can provide such knowledge and motivate women to initiate pre-entry activities. In a field experiment design in rural India, we randomly selected a sample of unemployed women for exposure to customized start-up templates, and then observed their decision to initiate pre- entry activity through their sign-ups for a paid enterprise training program. We find that 50% more women sign up when they are exposed to start-up templates as compared to the control group. We further investigate whether this effect is influenced by the template’s description of actions and resources for carrying out the founding tasks. We find that the rate of sign-ups is 24% higher when the start-up templates emphasize the use of social connections, as compared to relying on individual selves. This paper provides causal empirical evidence of how templates can provide entrepreneurial knowledge required for reducing uncertainty and increasing the likelihood of entrepreneurship.