Expanding the Resource Stocks of Early-Stage Ventures Open Access

Abstract

Entrepreneur accelerators are emerging around the world to provide promising new ventures with critical training and mentorship, networking opportunities, and seed funding. However, we currently know little about how these accelerators influence the development of early-stage ventures. This dissertation explores the dynamic interplay between entrepreneur selection and development. The focus is on how the backgrounds of a founding team influence its probability of being selected into an accelerator program and the founding team's ability to benefit from the program regarding knowledge, network, and capital.

This dissertation argues that accelerators would favor teams with excellent backgrounds, but those credentialing factors are likely to lead to differential acceleration outcomes. I explore this issue using an expanding dataset from the Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, which currently consists of 4,125 ventures that applied to more than 50 different accelerator programs between 2013 and 2015. The results indicate that accelerators favor teams with outstanding credentials. However, teams with outstanding credentials do not revise much their business ideas but attract the most of the financial capital after acceleration.

This dissertation further proposes a partial explanation for such difference from the entrepreneurs' perspective. Because of bounded rationality, entrepreneurs will prefer tangible resources than tacit ones. This tendency will be stronger when the founding team has a better background because of overconfidence. With analyses of the preference for the benefits provided at accelerator programs, this dissertation demonstrates that founding teams on average prefer capital the most and knowledge the least. Teams with better credentials are more likely to give this ranking that those from a modest background. The findings of this study improve our understanding of business accelerators and the early-stage organizational development. It also provides practical insights for business accelerators, which are emerging to help entrepreneurs succeed.

Table of Contents

List of figures i
List of tables ii
1 Introduction 1
1.0.1 AcceleratorSelection ............................ 3
1.0.2 Team Credentials and the Acceleration Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.0.3 The Entrepreneurship Database Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.0.4 Overview of Dissertation .......................... 7
2 Background 10
2.0.1 Introduction to Business Accelerators................... 10
2.0.2 Existing Studies on Accelerators...................... 14
3 Selection, Acceleration, and Selective Attention 18
3.0.1 Do Accelerators Select on Team Credentials?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.0.2 The Moderating Effect of Team Credentials on Acceleration . . . . . . 20
3.0.3 Team Credentials and Selective Attention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.0.4 Acceleration or Selection? The Internal Conflict of Accelerators . . . . 32
4 Context, Data, and Variables 34
4.0.1 The Entrepreneurship Database Program (EDP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.0.2 Data Collection ............................... 36
4.0.3 Independent Variables - The Credentialing Factors of Founding Teams 38
4.0.4 Dependent Variables of The Three Major Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.0.5 Control Variables .............................. 45
4.0.6 Data Overview & SummaryStatistics ................... 48
5 Accelerator Selection and Acceleration Outcomes 53
5.0.1 Study1:AcceleratorSelection ....................... 53
5.0.2 Study 2: Founding Team Credentials and Acceleration Outcomes . . . 57
5.0.3 Synopsis ................................... 75
6 The Selective Attention to Acceleration Benefits 79
6.0.1 Overview of the Desired Benefits in the EDP Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.0.2 The Rank-Ordered Choice Model ..................... 81
6.0.3 Model Results ................................ 94
7 Conclusion 98
7.0.1 Summary................................... 98
7.0.2 Contribution................................. 101
7.0.3 Limitations..................................102
7.0.4 Future Research...............................103
References 105
Appendix A EDP Survey Templates 113

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Business
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Business Administration, Entrepreneurship Business Administration, Management Business Administration, General
Keyword	Business Accelerator Entrepreneurial Outcomes Founder Background Resource Mobilization Entrepreneurship
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Negro, Giacomo, Emory University Roberts, Peter, Emory University
Committee Members	Chellappa, Ramnath, Emory University

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