Founders' pre-entry knowledge and the heterogeneous returns to accelerator participation

Deskripsi

While startup accelerators often benefit founders and their ventures, these gains may not be uniform. We examine how founders' pre-entry knowledge—the cumulative education, industry experience, and entrepreneurial exposure that teams acquire prior to launching their startups—shapes the heterogeneous returns to accelerator participation. We propose two potential mechanisms driving these returns: knowledge compensation, whereby accelerators fill gaps in basic knowledge and competencies, and knowledge complementarity, whereby accelerators amplify the absorption and deployment of expert knowledge. Using data from 6723 startups and their founding teams, we find evidence in support of the complementarity mechanism. Our findings also suggest that the returns to accelerator participation are contingent on the alignment between founders' pre-entry knowledge and program design.