This paper explores the determinants of start-up size by focusing on a cohort of 6247 businesses that started trading in 2004, using a unique dataset on customer records at Barclays Bank. In our theoretical model, post-entry growth is treated as a random walk, and start-up size is positively...

Does our ability to predict the performance of new ventures improve in the years after start-up? We investigate the growth and survival of 6247 new ventures that are tracked using the customer records at Barclays Bank. We put forward Gambler's Ruin as a simple theory for understanding new...

This ‘Debate Essay’ responds to the extensive overview of research on new venture survival provided by Soto-Simeone et al. (2020). The material they reviewed exclusively emphasised the link between the talents, skills, awareness of the business owner and new venture outcomes. Our case is...

This paper investigates whether entrepreneurship constitutes a route out of deprivation for those living in deprived areas. Our measure of income/wealth is based on analysis of improvements in an individual's residential address. Our data consist of information on over 800,000 individuals, and...

This paper investigates whether new venture performance becomes easier to predict as the venture ages: does the fog lift? To address this question we primarily draw upon a theoretical framework, initially formulated in a managerial context by Levinthal (1991) that sees new venture sales as a...

Several theories suggest that excessive fast growth may lead to failure. We explore survival across the growth rate distribution for a cohort of 6579 new ventures, tracked over their first 10 years, using customer records data from a major UK bank. We measure failure though termination of the...

This paper links new firm survival with growth, with a focus on the patterns in firms' growth paths. We theorise a Gambler's Ruin framework by arguing that new rm performance is best modelled as a random walk process, but that survival is nonrandom and depends primarily on the stock of...