Does founding team composition influence external investment? The role of founding team prior experience and founder CEO

Entrepreneurship research examines the nature and diversity of founding teams’ prior experience to understand its influence on the new ventures’ growth, which is often measured in terms of the latter’s capacity to raise capital (i.e., external investment). Founding teams operating in the high-tech industry need a diverse set of experiences—entrepreneurial, managerial, and industry (technological domain)-specific—to craft a venture strategy. However, the conditions in which these experiences lead to an external investment remain unclear. We address this issue by arguing that these types of experience have different effects on the efforts of Founder CEOs and Non-Founder CEOs to influence external investment. We tested this theoretical argument using a sample of 60 new young high-technology ventures, and the results point to a positive association between founding teams’ prior managerial and industry (technological domain)-specific experience and the obtainment of external investment. The relationship between Founder CEO and external investment was negative. The interactive influence of a team’s prior experience and the CEO’s role on external investment demonstrates the former’s crucial effect on venture growth, particularly regarding new ventures managed by Founder CEOs and teams with prior managerial experience.