Founder team prior work experience: An asset ora liability for startup growth?
We examine the effects of founderteams’ firm- and industry prior work experience on startupgrowth in the context of high technology industries. Westudy these effects both on the early growth of startupsand on their growth, after accumulating experiential knowl-edge. Integrating the literatures on human capital, imprint-ing and competency traps, we develop a typology of fourcombinations of founder prior experience: founder samefirm and same industry experience, founder same industrybut other firm experience, founder same firm but other-industry experience, and founder other-industry and otherfirm experience. Using data from 153 Israeli high technol-ogy startups, we find significant variations in the effects ofthese combinations on startup growth, which also varybetween the early and later years of these startups.
