You can't leave your past behind: The influence of founders' career histories on their firms.

摘要

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, I formulate and then test a theory that considers the interaction between three main facets of founders' backgrounds, namely human capital or demographic features, social capital and status. Second, I investigate whether founders' backgrounds change as an industry evolves.; Taken together, the three propositions of this study provide a refined way of considering how status, demographic features, and social capital work in concert. I argue that organizations within each group capitalize on different types of features of the founding team in order to garner success. Overall high status teams live off their reputations, or great expectations for success, and obtain more outside resources than middle or low status teams. While the legitimacy of middle status teams is not taken for granted, they can also be successful provided that they conform to expected features of generally successful founding teams. Finally low status teams will be most dependent on prior social connections for access to outside resources.; The argument is tested on a sample of 125 dedicated biotechnology firms located in the Boston and San Francisco Bay areas. Results show that there is an interaction between the status, human capital and diversity of the founding team's prior affiliations. On average, high status firms tend to perform better than their low and middle status counterparts. Increasing diversity of prior affiliations and the presence of additional demographic features among founding team members provide differential value to the three groups. How they vary also differs from one outcome to the next.; Finally, who becomes involved in the founding process changes significantly, both over time as well as across regions. As venture capitalists become less involved in the founding process, those with industry experience become more involved. Academics remain crucial to the founding process throughout the industry's thirty year history. At the regional level, a greater concentration of firms is founded by elite academics in Boston, and by industry veterans in the San Francisco Bay area.