Does heterogeneity in the educational backgrounds of the founders matter for firm success? Are team foundations more successful than single entrepreneurs? These questions are analysed using data on academic spinoffs in Germany. Firm success is measured by employment growth. I find that team...

Many studies found that women-owned firms underperform when comparing performance indicators at an aggregate level. The performance gap might be attributed to gender differences in personal and firm characteristics affecting performance. However, previous studies were not able to entirely...

This paper analyzes empirically the determinants of new born firms' initial size. As survival prospects of young firms tend to be linked to a firm's start-up size, a better understanding of the factors influencing start-up size is crucial. Most of the rare literature on initial firm size focuses...

This paper analyzes empirically the determinants of new born firms' initial size. As survival prospects of young firms tend to be linked to a firm's start-up size, a better understanding of the factors influencing start-up size is crucial. Most of the rare literature on initial firm size focuses...

There remains considerable scholarly debate about the role that prior entrepreneurial experience plays in new venture survival. Drawing on entrepreneurial learning theories, we use panel data on 8,400 new ventures to investigate the impact of four different types of prior entrepreneurial...

We investigate the workforce heterogeneity of startups with respect to education, age and wages. Our explorative study uses data on the population of 1,614 Danish firms founded in 1998. We track these firms until 2001 which enables us to analyze changes in workforce composition over time. Such a...

We investigate the extent to which complementarities between technical and business skills of founders and employees matter for the generation of market novelties by new ventures. Using data about German start-ups, we find that there are no complementarities between technical and business skills...