The creation and scaling of startups are inherently linked to risk-taking, with various types of owners handling these risks differently. This paper investigates the influence of an active venture capital (VC) market on startups' decisions regarding research and scaling. It outlines conditions...

Startups face a trade-off between short-term profitability versus long-term growth where investors tolerate prolonged financial losses. We present a new theory and empirical evidence about the existence and shape of so-called J-curves. The theory predicts that investors facing better exit...

This paper proposes a theory of gazelle growth in which gazelles can either grow organically or by acquisitions. In the model, there are three types of firms: incumbent, target, and gazelle. We show that the lower cost of organic growth can increase the incentives for acquisition growth. The...

The creation and scaling of startups are associated with risk-taking and different types of owners treat these risks differently. We show how an active venture capital (VC) market affects risk-taking in research and scaling decisions of startups. VC-backed startups will choose more high-risk,...

Existing empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs are optimists, a finding researchers often interpret as evidence of a behavioral bias in entrepreneurial decision-making. We revisit this claim by analyzing an unusually large survey dataset (180,814 responses) that allows us to create a...