Helping to grow on a shoestring? The role of strategy for global startups
76 Pages Posted: 25 Jan 2023 Last revised: 23 Jan 2024
Date Written: November 7, 2023
Abstract
Can strategy help startups compensate for constraints in local endowments like venture capital, market size, and talent pools that prior work finds important for startup performance? This paper addresses this question by interviewing executives of 253 scaling software ventures from over 30 economies and scoring the alignment of their market and organizational choices to detect whether they have a strategy, developing the first dataset of its kind. The study finds that having a strategy negatively moderates the relationship between HQ city and economy endowments and startup performance. This effect is concentrated among startups in more irreversible circumstances. The results suggest that strategy is a substitute for local endowments, with the potential to help startups overcome resource scarcities that constrain growth around the world.
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Strategy, Technology Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Scaling, International Entrepreneurship, Strategy
JEL Classification: M13, M16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation