Failing Just Fine : Assessing Careers of Venture Capital-backed Entrepreneurs via a Non-Wage Measure

This paper proposes a non-pecuniary measure of career achievement, Seniority. Based on a database of over 5 million resumes, this metric exploits the variation in job titles and how long they take to attain. When non-monetary factors influence career choice, inference benefits from the use of non-wage measures, such as seniority. We apply it to study labor market outcomes of VC-backed entrepreneurs. Would-be founders experience accelerated career trajectories prior to founding, significantly outperforming graduates of same-tier colleges with similar first jobs. After exiting their start-ups, they obtain jobs about three years more senior than their right-before-founding peers. Even failed founders land jobs with higher seniority than those attained by their peers in the meantime