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The purpose of this paper is to use a combination of resource-based theory and dynamic capabilities theory to explore the phenomenon of startup survival in an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The study has a phenomenological research design, with an exploratory scope and qualitative approach. It uses in-depth interviews to identify the perceptions of ecosystem agents about the phenomenon of survival.

This paper argues that startup survival should be studied as a construct that is reflected by four conditions: break-even point, accelerated growth, cash stock and continuous operation. Furthermore, it is formed by the interaction of five mainly interacting resources: human capital, social capital, entrepreneurial capital, organizational capital and the incubation process.

The study offers a holistic model of survival that could be applicable to incipient entrepreneurial ecosystems such as the Peruvian one. This model presents survival as a reflexive-formative construct and not as a dichotomic variable (enterprise operating/enterprise closed) as has been commonly considered in the literature.

En este documento se utiliza una combinación de la teoría basada en los recursos y la teoría de las capacidades dinámicas para explorar el fenómeno de la sobrevivencia de startups en un ecosistema emprendedor incipiente.

El estudio tiene un diseño de investigación fenomenológica, con un alcance exploratorio y un enfoque cualitativo. Utiliza entrevistas en profundidad para identificar las percepciones de los agentes del ecosistema sobre el fenómeno de la sobrevivencia.

En este documento se argumenta que la sobrevivencia de los startups debe estudiarse como un constructo que se refleja en cuatro condiciones: el punto de equilibrio, el crecimiento acelerado, el stock de efectivo y la operación continua. Además, se forma por la interacción de cinco categorías de recursos organizacionales: el capital humano, el capital social, el capital emprendedor, el capital organizacional y el proceso de incubación.

El documento ofrece un modelo holístico de sobrevivencia que podría ser aplicable en ecosistemas emprendedores incipientes como el peruano. Este modelo presenta a la sobrevivencia como un constructo reflexivo-formativo y no como una variable dicotómica (empresa en actividad / empresa cerrada) como se ha considerado comúnmente en la literatura.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the talent acquisition practices adopted by startups and understand how small entrepreneurs leverage social capital to address the talent acquisition challenges faced by them, and; identify some of the unique parameters adopted by startups in talent acquisition.

This study uses a multiple case study method to explore the talent acquisition practices in startups in India. The study included six case studies on startups in Hubli city of North Karnataka in India.

This paper finds that startups (especially in smaller cities) face challenges such as lower quality of talent pool, absence of a brand name, inability to provide competitive salary and other benefits as per industry standards and locational disadvantages in talent acquisition. Thus, entrepreneurs leverage their social capital for talent acquisition by handpicking talent on the basis of familiarity or credible networks and recommendations. Incubation centres provide institutionalized sources of social capital to help them attract good talent. This study finds that employee-culture fit and trust play important role in acquiring talent in startups.

The study has implications for startup entrepreneurs, recruitment service providers, incubation centres, trainers, policymakers, etc. The study provides useful insights to the startups with regard to their recruitment practices.

This study contributes to the literature in the domains of talent acquisition, startups and social capital by describing hiring challenges faced by startups and exploring the mechanisms used by them in overcoming such challenges.

This study explores the relevance of social capital resources generated through networks to address the marketing challenges of startups. It looks into the marketing issues faced by startup firms in emerging markets and examines how they leverage their social capital to reach out to their customers and other stakeholders for marketing their products and services.

The case study analysis using the abduction method, semi-structured interview and content analysis were used for answering the research questions.

This study finds the importance of developing social capital by startups for marketing activities. Social capital also acts as a strategic advantage that the competitors cannot easily emulate. Findings show that the development of social capital happens through the network of startup entrepreneurs and social connections involving customers, dealers and suppliers, among others.

This study is a novel attempt to emphasize the potential of social capital for marketing activities in a startup firm. This study expands the literature on social capital with a marketing perspective in an emerging economy context. The academic and managerial implications have also been highlighted in the study.

Financing investments in a knowledge-intensive sector may be more difficult as there is a greater degree of uncertainty and asymmetries of information. This paper aims to examine whether a company’s intellectual capital (human capital, relational capital and structural capital) can serve as a quality signal in the financing of health care startups with new business models.

The study constructed a manual database using several paid and unpaid databases. This paper collected random data from 204 startups that obtained funding during the 2014–2017 period and used signaling theory to examine the factors that impact access to external financing for Indian health care technology startups.

This paper found that venture capitalists partly base their financing decisions on the relational capital of the startup represented by startups’ age and the average number of website visits, the presence of a syndicate of investors. Human capital variables and structural variables do not show much significant impact. This paper also find some business models show a negative impact on financing implying that investors are reluctant to invest in new technologies that carry more uncertainty and take a longer time to become profitable.

Before concluding this paper, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the study and some implications for future research purposes. First, the study is conducted on only 204 startups from India, and as such, it suffers from a small sample size, like many other comparable survey-based studies in entrepreneurship. Second, the results are obtained with respect to data collected from Indian startups and represent the Indian context which limits the generalization on a global level.

The results suggest that years of experience and prior relevant experience, do not actually impact the financing of a new venture. These results are crucial as India has a unique demographic advantage over other countries in relation to age. If young minds are adequately nurtured, this can result in innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation (which still remains as a foremost challenge for India).

From a policy perspective, a number of implications emerge from the current study. There is a need for ameliorating the capacity of the education system in providing top-quality support including a greater focus on entrepreneurship courses and to replicate the education delivery model from top foreign institutes. The government should take this opportunity to revive the system of education and follow the methodology of elite institutes and to develop entrepreneurship spirit in other colleges and schools.

Financing the investments of young startups with new business models in knowledge-based sectors may be more difficult. In this paper, this paper demonstrates that startups have to effectively use and manage their intellectual assets to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The findings of the paper emphasize the role of intellectual capital in securing financing through venture capital.

Drawing on the resource-based view, this study aims to examine how family involvement in migrant-founded small businesses gives rise to distinctive resources that help these businesses survive.

Using microdata from the 2007 US survey of business owners (SBO), this study uses logit regression modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.

Results show that small businesses founded by migrant entrepreneurs are less likely to survive and that family involvement weakens the negative relationship between founder migrant status and business survivability. In addition, the positive moderating effect associated with family involvement is further strengthened by the use of external/borrowing startup capital, thus migrant families founded small businesses with access to external capital have the highest probability of survival.

This study contributes to the literature on both migrant entrepreneurship and family business. This paper finds family involvement in the business, interacting with the founder’s migrant status, tends to create distinctive resource endowments that help to compensate for the resource constraints associated with migrant entrepreneurs. Such resource endowments may take the form of high levels of solidarity among migrant family members and the spanning role of the migrant kinship networks extended from the country of origin to the country of residence.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the factors determining the choice of sources of finance for a tech startup over its lifecycle.

This study adopts simple random sampling technique to choose 93 sample tech startups in Bangalore. Further, this study employs the primary data collection from the sampled startups under study through a semi-structured questionnaire and in-depth interviews with the founders/CEOs of these startups. Furthermore, it carries out binary logistic regression analysis to primarily examine the likelihood of a tech startup to approach and access a particular source of finance over its lifecycle.

Our results indicate that a tech startup's choice for a financial source varies with its lifecycle stage and financial requirements. We find that while in its early stage, a tech startup's choice of a financial source is limited to business angels (BA), in the growth stage, it approaches the institutional sources, viz. Venture Capital (VC), Corporate Venture Capital (CVC), Banks and Private Equity (PE) firms alternatively. Out of the three major categories of financial requirements: Human Capital (HC), Research Capital (RC) and Social Capital (SC), the requirement for HC and SC is predominantly funded by VCs, while the acquisition of RC is facilitated by early stage investors (BAs) as well as growth stage investors (CVC and PEs).

The research implication of the study lies in bringing out the need to understand both the nature and the quantum of financial requirements of tech startups would influence the sources of finance it would approach and obtain finance for its operations and growth.

The major policy implication of the study refers to the need to promote the diverse sources of finance to meet the diverse needs of finance in different stages of a tech startup's lifecycle. Particularly in an emerging economy, where we do not see the emergence and growth of highly innovative tech startups, the need to promote adequate availability of RC is especially important.

This study makes a key contribution to the entrepreneurial finance literature by empirically investigating the factors determining a tech startup's propensity to approach and access a particular source of finance over its lifecycle.

This paper aims to provide a brief review of the work on startup survival and a conceptual framework of factors influencing a startup firm’s survival. In addition, it lists significant gaps and recommends avenues for future research.

This paper conducted a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCO databases using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. A total of 140 articles published in 72 journals between 1993 and 2021 were considered for the review.

The comprehensive review revealed that most of the studies have applied a single theoretical lens and have taken place in advanced economies, with a narrow focus on emerging economies. Empirical research has prominently applied regression-based models to analyse the relationship between the antecedents and the outcomes. Internal resources such as human capital, financial capital and physical capital and non-financial performance measures such as survival, growth and employment are the studies’ prominently used antecedents and outcome variables. However, a limited number of studies have used mechanisms of mediation and moderation.

Despite the substantial scientific and practical discussion on startup survival, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no comprehensive review has been undertaken to date, which provides a systematic and comprehensive compilation of the knowledge on the topic. This study aims to develop a unique landscape of scientific advancement by methodically reviewing, categorising and synthesising the current body of knowledge on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence the success of entrepreneurial ventures started by members of the Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley.

It is based on survey data collected from Indian-born high-tech entrepreneurs living in Silicon Valley, and uses Bayesian estimation to test hypotheses aimed at understanding entrepreneurial growth. Specifically, the paper examines the linkages between prior startup experience, participation in diasporic networks, and new venture growth.

It finds that entrepreneurs with prior startup experience displayed more active participation in diasporic networks, and were more likely to have co-founders. Active network participation over a length of time was positively related to new venture growth. The findings contribute toward the understanding of the value of startup experience in leveraging social networks, and the relationship between diasporic network participation and entrepreneurship.

As a cross-sectional study with a single data source, it is subject to concerns about causality and common method variance.

The results highlight the value of serial entrepreneurship and the potential benefits to immigrant entrepreneurs of participating in diasporic social networks, especially those with a global reach. They also suggest that investors would be better off investing in entrepreneurs who have greater startup experience and participate actively in diasporic networks.

The paper is based on a very unique sample of Indian-born immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs based in the Silicon Valley. It provides a deeper understanding of the role of diasporic social networks, and their relationship with prior startup experience and entrepreneurial success within that context.

Existing literature shows that marketing capabilities of new ventures are critical success factors affecting venture capital funding, startup performance and business failure. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether venture capitalists reward extensive marketing strategies in their startup valuation and whether the marketing mix planning and early strategies on customer orientation predict long-term development of startups.

To address these gaps, this study investigate 107 business plans of new ventures which received venture capital based on these planning documents. The authors use computer-aided text analysis and regression analyses.

This study’s findings show that customer orientation has positive effects on new venture performance and intensive marketing mix planning increases the likelihood of survival. However, venture capitalists decrease their startup valuation when they read too much about customer orientation and operative marketing mix planning.

This study relies on unique internal documents and therefore provides valuable and new insights for research and practice. Further, this study investigate various short- and long-term effects from marketing and customer orientation for a startups’ development.

This paper aims to explain the fundraising and valuation processes of startups and discuss the conflicts of interest between entrepreneurs, venture capital (VC) firms and stakeholders in the context of startup corporate governance. Further, this paper uses the examples of WeWork and Zenefits to explain how a failure of stakeholders to demand an external audit from an independent accounting firm in early stages of funding led to an opportunity for fraud.

The methodology used is a literature review and analysis of startup valuation combined with the Fraud Triangle Theory. This paper also provides a discussion of WeWork and Zenefits, both highly visible examples of startup fraud, and explores an increased role for independent external auditors in fraud risk mitigation on behalf of stakeholders prior to an initial public offering (IPO).

This paper documents a number of fraud risks posed by the “fake it till you make it” ethos and investor behavior and pricing in the world of entrepreneurial finance and VC, which could be mitigated by a greater awareness of startup stakeholders of the value of an external audit performed by an independent accounting firm prior to an IPO.

An implication of this paper is that regulators should consider greater oversight of the startup financing process and potentially take steps to facilitate greater independence of participants in the IPO process.

Given the potential conflicts of interest between VC firms, investment banks and startup founders, the investors at the time of an IPO may be exposed to the risk that the shares of the IPO firms are overvalued at offering.

This study demonstrates how startup practices can be extended to the Fraud Triangle and issue a call to action for the accounting profession to take a greater role in protecting the public from startup fraud. This study then offers recommendations for regulators and standards entities.

There are few academic papers in the financial crime literature that link the valuation and culture of startup firms with fraud risk. This study provides a concise explanation of the process of valuation for startups and highlights the considerations for stakeholders in assessing fraud risk. In addition, this study documents an emerging role for auditors as stewards of proper valuation for pre-IPO firms.