Paving the Way to Success: Linking the Strategic Ecosystem of Entrepreneurial Start-Ups with Market Performance

Entrepreneurial endeavours are pivotal to development and growth. It is critical then to recognize and prioritize the need of building new, sustainable businesses that will create and offer products and services aligned with the interests of diverse stakeholders. This research studies the impact of the strategic ecosystem of entrepreneurial start-ups on their market performance. To identify performance precursors, we surveyed the founders of 108 new ventures regarding a broad range of determinants; including strategic factors, human resources, networking with external partners, pre-entry funding choices, and board profiles. Our findings suggest that the performance differentials across these firms can be largely attributed to their human assets, strategic foundation, and board heterogeneity as reflected in gender diversity in decision boards and the number of founders. Service start-ups, and those that have been founded in urban crowded areas were also associated with better performance compared to manufacturing new ventures and those located in a country’s periphery. In an opposite direction, funding choices and established partnership-based networks were not related to market success. Likewise, the impact of start-ups’ industry growth, the rate of technology obsoletion, as well as several macro-environmental influences appears to have a limited effect on performance.