Essays on Founder Human Capital and Venture Performanc

This dissertation investigates how founder characteristics such as education and entrepreneurial experience affect venture performance. Prior literature has suggested that founder human capital embodied in educational background and entrepreneurial experience is critical to the survival and development of new ventures. Extant research has also viewed founder human capital as a signal of founder ability and venture quality. This dissertation contributes to research by examining the performance implications of two unique types of founders: dropout entrepreneurs who lack a college degree and serial entrepreneurs who are experienced in new venture creation.;The first essay seeks to shed light on the debate about the virtue of dropping out of college to pursue entrepreneurship by asking: How do new ventures founded by college dropout entrepreneurs (dropout-founded ventures) perform as compared with new ventures founded by college graduates (graduate-founded ventures)? Despite several prominent examples over the last few decades of college dropout entrepreneurs such as Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, it is unclear whether dropping out of college is an appropriate choice for a student entrepreneur. While dropout entrepreneurs lack a college degree, which serves as an opportunity to build a personal network and to signal individual quality in entrepreneurship, they might leverage other quality signals and build a network through other channels to offset the lost opportunity of the formal degree. We argue that while dropout-founded ventures take longer time to reach milestones, such as venture capital (VC) funding and initial public offering (IPO), founder education from an elite school and prior work connections attenuate this timing disadvantage. We find evidence in support of this argument through a survival model analysis of hand-collected data on VC-backed ventures and their founders during 1960--2012 that eventually go public.;The second essay examines the relationship between serial entrepreneurs and firm survival. Serial entrepreneurs contribute significantly to new venture creation and economic development. Extant studies have found that entrepreneurial experience, especially successful entrepreneurial experience, has a positive effect on the success of subsequent ventures in terms of both venture capital funding and financial performance. However, prior studies have not addressed the possibility that many entrepreneurs may exhibit differing talents that also affect their venture performance. Also, prior studies do not consider the endogeneity problem, in which entrepreneurs self-select into serial entrepreneurship, in studying serial entrepreneurs' founding experience and venture performance. This research accounts for the propensity of individuals to be serial entrepreneurs based on their prior education and work experience and examines the performance implications of serial entrepreneurship dynamically over their entrepreneurial careers. Interestingly, we find that founding experience itself increases the chances of a firm's survival, and previous success could enhance the relationship, while a mixed record of success and failure could weaken the relationship.;This dissertation adds to entrepreneurship research by advancing our understanding of the relationship between founder human capital and venture performance. The arguments and analyses extend research in the human capital and signaling literature by showing that education and entrepreneurial experience are at best incomplete and imperfect as indicators and signals of founder human capital. Our study further shows that founder human capital effect has a dynamic dimension over the entrepreneurial career of entrepreneurs and the life cycle of new ventures.