Your Startup Team: Why Both Shared and Diverse Experiences Matter

Which kinds of startup teams will be more successful: people who've worked together in the past and share many experiences, or groups of individuals with different work histories and experiences? My research has shown that a cadre of founders with shared experiences and histories has a better shot at survival than teams with disparate experiences, but teams really performed when they include some of both.

My study focused on the work experience of about 6,000 founding teams in a sample of technology manufacturing startups. In particular, I looked at the variety of experience founders possessed (or their "within-founder experience variety") as well as the extent to which founders had worked together in the past. I found that the startups were more likely to survive when their founding teams combined the stability from members with across-team shared experiences with the innovativeness that flows from other teammates with experience variety.

This video summarizes my findings. For a copy of the full article, email me at [email protected], or you can visit the article page of the journal's website here.

Florence Honoré
Assitant Professor / Management and Human Resources / University of Wisconsin-Madison
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10.32617/637-6050ba999f1cd

Honoré, Florence. "Your Startup Team: Why Both Shared and Diverse Experiences Matter." FamilyBusiness.org. 16 Mar. 2021. Web 22 Nov. 2024 <https://eiexchange.com/content/your-startup-team-why-both-shared-and-diverse-experiences-matter>.

Honoré, F. (2021, March 16). Your startup team: why both shared and diverse experiences matter. FamilyBusiness.org. Retrieved November 22, 2024, from https://eiexchange.com/content/your-startup-team-why-both-shared-and-diverse-experiences-matter