Start-up Stage Research Articles

Research On High Precision Fiber Optic Platform System Temperature Compensation Technology

In a high-precision fiber optic platform system, temperature changes will have a significant impact on the start-up speed and actual application accuracy. In order to effectively improve the navigation accuracy of the system, the article analyzes the temperature characteristics of the system-level calibration error parameters and establishes a temperature error model. Finally, a temperature compensation test and a platform model calibration test are designed to verify the compensation effect. The test results show that the established temperature error compensation model is accurate and effective. The stability of error parameters has increased by an order of magnitude. The method improves the performance of the fiber optic platform at the start-up stage, and has a small amount of calculation, which has high engineering application value.

Beyond Donations: Isomorphism and Revenue Mix in Nonprofit Start-Ups

The literature on nonprofit growth contains a practical ambiguity regarding which types of revenues to cultivate as a start-up nonprofit. The revenue portfolio of a more established organization may be inappropriate (or unattainable) for a new one, but there may be perils in relying too long on sources of nonprofit start-up capital. We posit that nonprofit entrepreneurs choose to mimic larger organizations in their field for growth rather than rely on the revenue mix of their start-up stage. This study uses two different dynamic econometric models to estimate the role of revenue type and other organizational factors in the growth of young and small nonprofits. We find that mimicking the revenue habits of larger organizations is generally (but not universally) advisable, with most conclusions sensitive to subsector.

The Effects of The Characteristics of Entrepreneurs on the Creation Process of SMEs

The theme of this review is to elucidate how entrepreneurial traits affect the start-up process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which aims to learn more about the relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and the early stages of SMEs. While most of the previous literature has focused on the mode of operation of the company, there is very little literature on the early stages of entrepreneurship in SMEs which play a vital role in the world economy. It is hoped that this review will help to provide deep insights to those who wish to start their own business. By identifying gaps in existing research and focusing on how entrepreneurial characteristics affect the start-up stage of SMEs creation, the review provides direction for future research and ideas for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The review finds that different types of entrepreneurs influence the future direction of an enterprise, and that entrepreneurial personality qualities and business development are positively linked. The extroversion of entrepreneurs in the Big Five personality theory makes entrepreneurs more willing to interact and collaborate with others, thus influencing the performance and growth of the start-up.

Experimental and numerical studies of mode switching performance and water transfer in unitized regenerative fuel cells with different channel structures

Different flow channel structures of unitized regenerative fuel cells have great effects on the flow process of reactive gas, liquid product and flowing purge gas inside channels and the transport process of them in the porous media layer. In this study, the unitized regenerative fuel cell with three different kinds of channel structures are designed and manufactured based on the numerical simulation. By utilizing the unitized regenerative fuel cell testing set-up, the output electricity performance test of the single cell in the fuel cell mode, electrolytic cell mode and mode switching process are realized, and effective verification data are provided for the two-phase model verification of unitized regenerative fuel cells. The results show that different channel configurations result in various performance behaviors during different procedures of the cell. Using the channel having 1 mm square cross-section structures can perform better start-up performance, compared to the T-wide and T-narrow section channels. When entering into electrolysis cell mode, compared to the cell with T-section channels, the output performance of the cell constructed with 1 mm square section channel is decreased obviously at the initial stage of start-up because of the residual water affecting. The present experiments combined with simulation works facilitate better understanding how the performance and two-phase species changing at the operating procedures of unitized regenerative fuel cells with different flow channels.

Land Consolidation in Rural China: Historical Stages, Typical Modes, and Improvement Paths

Land consolidation is an important means to optimize land-use structure and improve the level of intensive and economical use of land, and it is also a critical measure to coordinate economic and social development and promote cultivated-land protection. Therefore, the scientific advancement of land consolidation is of great significance to comprehensively promote rural revitalization and build a modern agricultural power. In this study, we explore the history of rural China’s land consolidation since 1949 and divide it into five stages: start-up stage (1949–1977), exploration stage (1978–1997), rapid development stage (1998–2007), quality improvement stage (2008–2018) and comprehensive consolidation stage (2019 to present). In different stages, there are obvious differences in national policy orientation on land consolidation. The differences in organization and implementation entities determine that government-led land consolidation, enterprise-driven land consolidation and villager-initiated land consolidation are the three main modes of rural land consolidation in China. To overcome the problems existing in current rural development and boost rural and agricultural modernization, it is urgent to adhere to planning-led and ecological priorities, build a diversified input pattern, innovate the public participation mechanism and strengthen full-process supervision, scientifically promoting the whole-region comprehensive land consolidation in rural China.

Co-cultivation of microalgae-activated sludge for municipal wastewater treatment: Exploring the performance, microbial co-occurrence patterns, microbiota dynamics and function during the startup stage

Microalgae consortium is a promising technology for achieving low-carbon and resource utilization goals in municipal wastewater treatment. However, little is known about how the consortium affects the treatment performance in the startup stage of co-cultivation. Herein, photobioreactors were constructed with different contents of microalgae and activated sludge (AS) (wt.microalgae: wt.AS ≥ 50 %). The results showed that the concentration of microalgae increased by more than 20 % with AS, and the effluents were close or lower than Chinese discharge standards within HRT 24 h (NH4+-N, TP, and COD ≤ 5.0, 0.5, and 50 mg L-1). Furthermore, the co-occurrence pattern of microbial populations experienced inhibition-reconstruction and reconstruction-inhibition processes, respectively, and the inter-species relationship was directly related to the effluent quality. Microalgal concentration and temperature were the key factors to the microbial community profiling. The potential microorganisms in AS could promote the growth of microalgae, and the bacteria and fungi formed co-metabolism through functional complementation.

The rise of digital entrepreneurship in Latin America

Objective: This article discusses why digital start-ups are flourishing in Latin America. Method: Our research setting is Latin American digital companies. Our analysis is based on digital companies from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. We examined lists of Latin unicorn companies (valuation + US$ 1B) and other prominent digital companies compiled from available sources from CB Insights, and TechCrunch. We systematically gathered data on the companies’ growth trajectory from data sources, including online material from the companies’ official websites and public reports, press releases, and press interviews made by the heads of the companies, and internal reports. Main Results: The article discusses the drivers behind the scaling and expansion of digital start-ups and the increasing maturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystems that support them. Relevance / Originality: While Latin digital companies have gained media and investors’ attention, there is scant analysis of how these companies have surpassed the startup stage and scaled up their operations. Theoretical / Methodological Contributions: Our contribution focuses on understanding Latin America's particular conditions and the impact of digital ventures on the region's business landscape. We bring practical insights on how Latin American digital companies are growing, as digital entrepreneurship is experiencing an extraordinary growth route in the region and is linked to economic growth and innovation.

Discovering Success Factors in the Pioneering Stage of a Digital Startup

Abstract Background and Purpose: Successful digital startups can generate income for the country and improve people’s lives. However, for prospective founders who will launch their startups, the success factor in pioneering digital startups remains unknown. The purpose of this study is to identify key success factors for digital startups in pioneering stages. Methodology: Thematic analysis is a method for identifying success factors in pioneering stage digital startups. The data will be collected from the interviews of ten startup founders. Results: The findings show that fifteen critical factors are success factors in the digital startup pioneering stage, namely; problems, business ideas, teams, business models, capital or funding, products, incubators, validation, competitors, marketing, mastery of technology, market analysis, founders and co-founders, partners, and passion. These findings are expected to be ground-breaking for anyone interested in launching a digital startup. Conclusion: The first conclusion that we can draw is that there are fifteen important factors that can be claimed and used as success factors in the classification of the digital startup pioneering stage. The second conclusion, based on the findings of the ten founders’ analyses, is that problem factors and team factors are two of the fifteen most dominant and influential digital startup success factors. Problem factor is critical for detecting problems encountered by many people and can motivate digital startup founders to develop solutions to these problems. While team factor is important because with a team, all problems raised are quickly and easily resolved, and all work is handled productively and collaboratively.

Startup Financing: Some Evidence from the Indian Venture Capital Industry

This study analyses the venture capitalists’ evaluation of startups in the Indian context by using primary data obtained from a survey study of representatives drawn from the industry. A distinguishing feature of the study is the categorization of venture capitalists on the basis of their stage of financing for analyzing the nature of diversification prevalent in the industry, the rank order of risks as perceived by the different categories of venture capitalists, and their expected risk premium. The findings of the study suggest the existence of two broad categories of venture capitalists; those involved in early-stage financing and those who invested across the life stages of startups. Furthermore, results indicate that each of these two categories of venture firms attaches varying importance to the broad considerations that are known to impact a startup’s value, they are differently diversified, their rank order of perceived risks is different and so is the expected risk premium.

The Impact of Equity Funding Dynamics on Venture Success: An Empirical Analysis Based on Crunchbase Data

Equity funding is a widespread financing form that often accompanies the life cycle of innovative ventures from initial stages until maturity. From the perspective of investors, the event defining the success of an equity financing operation is the exit, which represents the moment when they leave the venture with the purpose of selling their shares. The potential high return of equity funding has motivated an empirical literature aimed at developing predictive models in support of investors’ decisions. However, no study so far has investigated how equity funding dynamics impact on a venture’s chance of successful exit. In this article, we develop a multinomial logistic regression model based on the Crunchbase 2013 Snapshot that relates the events of exit and closure to the amount of equity funds raised at different rounds, while controlling for geographical location, economic sector, age, network ties and several proxies of effectiveness. Our study contributes to the existing literature by providing a quantitative assessment of the impact of equity funding dynamics on a venture’s chance of successful exit and risk of closure that is not limited to the startup stage, but also covers advanced stages of development. In this way, we provide a comprehensive view of the different scenarios that may be envisioned in a venture’s life cycle, which is of core importance to achieve an effective support of investors’ decisions.

Conductive carrier promotes synchronous biofilm formation and granulation of anammox bacteria

The extracellular electron transfer capability of some anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) bacteria was confirmed in recent years. However, the effect of conductive carriers on the synchronous formation of anammox biofilm and granules is rarely reported. Anammox biofilm and granules with compact and stable structures accelerate the initiation and enhance the stability of the anammox process. In this study, we found that the conductive carbon fiber brush (CB) carrier promoted synchronous biofilm formation and granulation of anammox bacteria in the internal circulation immobilized blanket (ICIB) reactor. Compared with polyurethane sponge and zeolite carrier, the ICIB reactor packed with CB carrier can be operated under the highest total nitrogen loading rate of 6.53 kg-N/(m3·d) and maintain the effluents NH4+-N and NO2−-N at less than 1 mM. The volatile suspended solids concentration in the ICIB reactor packed with conductive carrier increased from 5.17 ± 0.40 g/L of inoculum sludge to 24.24 ± 1.20 g/L of biofilm, and the average particle size of granules increased from 222.09 µm to 879.80 µm in 150 days. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis showed that anammox bacteria prevailed in the biofilm and granules. The analysis of extracellular polymeric substances indicated that protein and humic acid-like substances played an important role in the formation of anammox biofilm and granules. Microbiome analysis showed that the relative abundance of Candidatus Jettenia was increased from 0.18% to 38.15% in the biofilm from CB carrier during start-up stage. This study provides a strategy for rapid anammox biofilm and granules enrichment and carrier selection of anammox process.

Research on SME Financing Strategy Based on Enterprise Life Cycle

The strategic management of enterprise financing plays a decisive role in enterprise management, especially the survival and rise and fall of small and medium-sized enterprises. According to the life cycle theory of enterprises, this paper divides the financial financing strategy management of SMEs into financing strategies in the start-up stage, financing strategies in the growth stage, financing strategies in the mature period and financing strategies in the recession period, and analyzes the different environments faced by SMEs in different life cycles and the characteristics of different stages of their life cycles, providing solutions for SMEs to develop financing strategies based on the life cycle of the enterprise.

A Heterogeneous Time-Tracking Fusion and Application to Health Evaluation of Aerospace Engines

Heterogeneous information fusion has long been a difficult problem due to the differences in the representation and feature of various physical information. Besides, the multi-sensor signals of large mechanical equipment such as aerospace engines often change in a complicated way during the start-up stage and long-term operation, which makes the multi-sensor fusion based health assessment research impending. To explore a suitable fusion method for the multi-physical signals with different change rates, as well as to monitor the health state of large mechanical equipment based on multi-sensor information, this paper proposes a heterogeneous time-tracking fusion algorithm. Firstly, the time-domain indexes and instantaneous frequencies of the fast-varying harmonic-like signals are obtained by employing index extraction and second-order synchrosqueezing transform respectively, by which the overall and detailed characteristics of the signals are thus obtained. Secondly, after structuring a dynamic time-tracking function consisting of the hyperbolic tangent function and modified arctangent function, the time-dynamic confidence upper limit for fast-varying signals and confidence interval for slow-varying signals are obtained creatively. Finally, the different varying-rate signals are fused into a dynamic normalized time-varying index representing the health state through the aforementioned functions. By applying the proposed method to the health evaluation for ignition start-up stage of gas generators and the long-term performance of the turbopump, its effectiveness and practicability in the aerospace engine health analysis have been validated.

Effect of air properties on a twin-shaft turbofan engine performance during start-up

When engines start in coastal areas in summer, the performance of turbofan engine and starter will be inevitably affected by ambient humidity and temperature. It is important to predict the change of start-up performance by capturing the effect of ambient humidity and temperature on the matching process between turbofan engine and starter. However, in the start-up model, starter model is usually simplified by look-up table of starter power and semi-empirical formulas. It is difficult to simulate the variation of transient performance of turbofan engine caused by the power change of the starter when the ambient humidity and temperature increase. In this paper, a new method for simulating the transient performance of start-up process is presented. The nonlinear transient model including turbofan engine and starter is developed based on real engine configurations. The power compatibility equation is established to correlate the turbofan engine and starter to predict the matching performance in the start-up stage. The model is validated using mature commercial software. The steady-state errors of the model are within 2 % and the dynamic errors are within 2.5 %. In this paper, the start-up process is divided into four stages, and the transient performance of turbofan engine and starter in each stage is analyzed. This paper simulates the transient performance of start-up process under different ambient temperature and humidity conditions. The results show that when the ambient temperature is 308.5 K and the relative humidity is 0.8, the starter power is reduced by 76.86 % and the start-up time is increased by 10.28 s.

The role of business culture in modelling the firm’s internal environment

A variety of firm’s internal environment models has been formed for about half a century, starting with S. Gibson triad (strategy — structure — systems), which first formulated the sequence of strategic planning stages, and ending with the PEST-atom model, which reflects not only the composition of the elements of internal environment, but also the relationships between them. The article shows that a modern system, which would reflect the structure of the elements of firm’s internal environment, should be built on the basis of its key element, inextricably linked to the essence of the firm and, at the same time, synchronously changing with it in the course of movement along the trajectory of the life cycle. Such element, which directly determines the degree of maturity of a firm, is its culture. Business culture is the central connecting element of the internal environment of a firm, providing a harmonious combination of all its other elements: strategy, organizational structure, motivation system, etc. and making the firm attractive for investment. At the same time the type of business culture is the main indicator of the stage of the life cycle of a firm, and since the diversity of culture types is limited to four types: the cultures of a professional, leader, bureaucrat andentrepreneur, the process of movement of a firm through the stages of its life cycle can be turned into a manageable one. In order to do this in the second half of the firm’s maturity stage the role of professional should be made dominant, and the decline stage should be transformed into the revival stage. This transition will require the transformation of the internal environment of a firm in accordance with the model of intelligent organization, which is a logical development of the concept of a self-learning organization.The paper shows that in the course of movement along the trajectory of its life cycle a firm, by ensuring innovative attractiveness and reducing operating costs per unit, consistently implements the following “chain of criteria”: innovativeness (introduction stage) — efficiency (start-up stage) — productivity (growth stage) — effectiveness (maturity stage). The possibility of applying the theoretical aspects proposed by the authors is confirmed in practice in the study of the life cycle of Rodnik LLC.

Анализ рынка маркетплейсов в России и перспективы его развития для финансовой стабилизации экономики

The challenges of Russian economy require entrepreneurial activity increase and technologies extension to develop entrepreneurship. Online trading on electronic marketplaces platforms is one of such factors of successful business development at the startup stage and its promotion. At present, the marketplaces leaders are already successfully operating in the Russian markets. Such marketplaces as Wildberries, Ozon, AliExpress, SberMegaMarket, Yandex Market are among them. The marketplace market is developing. Competent analytics is needed for its effective functioning. Digital marketplace market analytics services are being created in the country, which allow obtaining the necessary data to assess the business functioning and its development prospects. Problems and opportunities, trends and prospects of marketplaces development for financial stability of the country determine the study relevance. The purpose of the article is to review the features of Russian marketplaces functioning, to study the specifics of the marketplaces analysis and to present its analytics, to identify prospects and forecasts of e-commerce market development. Digital analytics, comparative evaluation, and review of information services, research portals and organizations (Data Insight, IContext Group, INFOline, etc.) were used in the article. As a result of the conducted research, the following results were obtained: literary review was conducted to understand the essence of e-commerce, and its advantages and prospects. The largest marketplaces were compared on the sales volume, commission amount and the number of audience to reveal marketplaces leaders. External and internal indicators of the marketplace market were summarized, including financial performance indicators. An overview of analytics services about marketplace markets to obtain data for analysis is given. Trends in the development of e-commerce market were identified.

경영전략 기업, 경영자 과신성향과 투자효율성

This study examines the effects of Bentley et al. (2013)'s management strategy (prospectors, analysts, and defenders) and managerial tendency on investment efficiency.
 The results of this study are as follows. Prospectors appear to have lower investment efficiency than analysts and defenders. On the other hand, companies pursuing analytical strategies have higher investment efficiency than those that do not. Second, if managers of prospectors are overconfident, companies appear to have lower investment efficiency due to optimistic expectations for the future. In addition, prospectors tend to overinvest, and defenders tend to underinvest.
 The contributions of this study are as follows. First, the relationship between the investment efficiency of a company was verified by participants in the capital market according to the manager's overconfidence tendency and management strategy. The second is that it systematically proved and presented to participants in the capital market that appropriate investment management is important in leading companies, including the characteristics of companies in the early stages of start-up. Finally, it presents a logical basis that investment efficiency management can be essential in corporate management.

Low-Grade Syngas Biomethanation in Continuous Reactors with Respect to Gas–Liquid Mass Transfer and Reactor Start-Up Strategy

In order to utilize a wider range of low-grade syngas, the syngas biomethanation was studied in this work with respect to the gas–liquid mass transfer and the reactor start-up strategy. Two reactors, a continuous stirred tank (CSTR) and a bubble column with gas recirculation (BCR-C), were used in the experiment by feeding an artificial syngas of 20% H2, 50% CO, and 30% CO2 into the reactors at 55 °C. The results showed that the CH4 productivity was slightly increased by reducing the gas retention time (GRT), but was significantly improved by increasing the stirring speed in the CSTR and the gas circulation rate in the BCR-C. The best syngas biomethanation performance of the CSTR with a CH4 productivity of 22.20 mmol·Lr−1·day−1 and a yield of 49.01% was achieved at a GRT of 0.833 h and a stirring speed of 300 rpm, while for the BCR-C, the best performance with a CH4 productivity of 61.96 mmol·Lr−1·day−1 and a yield of 87.57% was achieved at a GRT of 0.625 h and a gas circulation rate of 40 L·Lr−1·h−1. The gas–liquid mass transfer capability provided by gas circulation is far superior to mechanical stirring, leading to a much better performance of low-grade syngas biomethanation in the BCR-C. Feeding H2/CO2 during the startup stage of the reactor can effectively stimulate the growth and metabolism of microorganisms, and create a better metabolic environment for subsequent low-grade syngas biomethanation. In addition, during the thermophilic biomethanation of syngas, Methanothermobacter is the dominant genus.

Biological hydrogen production from paper mill effluent via dark fermentation in a packed bed biofilm reactor

This study assessed the feasibility of continuous hydrogen production in an anaerobic packed bed biofilm reactor (APBR) using paper mill effluent (PME) without any pretreatment or modification. To form a microbial biofilm on supports, the reactor was seeded with a thermal pretreated anaerobic sludge. After the start-up stage, under mesophilic conditions and pH control, the system performance in the case of hydrogen production as biofuel and VFAs as valuable by-products as well as COD removal was investigated at different hydraulic retention times (HRTs) (24, 16, 12, 8, 4, 2 and 1.2 h). The highest hydrogen concentration in the produced gas was 41.5 % obtained at HRT 4 h. The highest hydrogen production rate and yield were 6.21 L H2 d−1 L−1 at HRT 2 h and 0.96 mmol H2 g−1 COD at HRT 8 h, respectively. With decreasing the HRT from 24 to 1.2 h, the OLR was increased from 27.35 to 547 g COD L−1 d−1 that positively affect the hydrogen production rate for all HRTs except for the shortest HRT. Furthermore, COD removal efficiency was reduced from 25.2 to 6 %. Low value of COD removal efficiency is because of conversion of organic inlet to valuable metabolites such as VFAs in the effluent.

Increasing Efficiency and Implementing the Principles of Leanness in the Production of Sandwich Panels for Special Vehicles

In the article, based on the experience of implementing the principles of lean manufacturing and the Kaizen ideology at industrial enterprises, as well as on the basis of the work of a number of specialists in the organization of production, steps are proposed to improve the efficiency of the pro-duction of sandwich panels for special vehicles, proposals are formulated for the introduction of a number of lean manufacturing tools and formed an idea of the potential effect of the implementation of the proposed measures at the stage of production start-up.