STARTING A NEW COMPANY — WHICH TYPES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE HELP?

This paper investigates the relationship between different types of personal experience and start-up success. We propose four extensions to earlier studies on the subject. First, we distinguish between management, technical, industry, and entrepreneurial experience of founders. Second, we consider decreasing marginal effects of different types of experience on start-up success. Third, our measures for start-up success correspond to the different stages of the entrepreneurial process. Fourth, we measure the "breadth" of experience in different fields in addition to the "depth" of experience per field. In the empirical part of the paper, we test all hypotheses using a sample of 137 German start-ups.