Website Design and Trust Elements: A/B Testing on a Start-up's Website

Start-ups are young companies that are hardly known, especially during their early stages, by the relevant stakeholders. A start-up's website is, therefore, often the first point of contact for potential customers, investors, or partners. Such a website usually explains the new product or service and presents the founding team with its competencies. The user's perception of the website and its design can be crucial in determining whether the user is interested in getting in touch with the start-up or even considering the purchase of the respective product or service. User’s trust in the website and its operator is essential for this. The so-called trust elements, such as logos, testimonials, or seals, are intended to create trust on websites. So far, the influence of these elements on user behaviour has hardly been empirically proven in a real-life context. Therefore, we have applied the method of A/B testing to the website of a fictive start-up. Trust elements were placed on one variant of the website (A), whereas on the other variant, there were none (B). The experiment shows that the duration of the user sessions does not differ between the two variants. However, more requests were made on the website variant with trust elements. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Motives, Supporting Activities, and Selection Criteria of Social Impact Incubators: An Experimental Conjoint Study

Social impact incubators (SIIs) are a new type of incubator that support social enterprises (SEs) in their early business stages to foster and develop their hybrid objectives. However, research on SIIs is still scarce, and little is known about SIIs’ motives, supporting activities, and selection criteria. In investigating 71 SII decision-makers, we find the societal duty motive stated as “most important,” while the financial motive is stated as “least important.” Furthermore, we identify the authenticity of the founding team and the importance of the societal problem addressed as SIIs’ most important selection criteria. However, significant heterogeneity exists within the group of SIIs with regard to their selection criteria. In particular, SIIs with strong innovation and societal duty motives stand out and differ in their SE selection criteria from other SIIs. Our results extend prior research on SIIs and contribute to the discussion on the selection criteria of SE supporters.

Research on Value Investment of Start-up Companies

This study investigates how investors can strengthen their value investment by applying the SWOT analysis in the Start-up company context. By conducting a constructive study with two cases, we develop a construction for qualitative and quantitative reference information with the help of the literature on Start-ups and value investment, the data on CB insights.com. This reference information for two Start-ups comprises funding data, investors, web traffic, news articles, patent data, and regulatory filings. This study also associates each information element to the internal factor assessment and external factor assessment of two Start-ups and accordingly develops metrics regarding the value investment. In addition, it demonstrates the different nature of two Start-ups for operating business to highlight the divergent value metrics. The key contributions of this study are the developed construction for qualitative and quantitative reference information and concluding that the founding team, market, product, business model, and competition are important factors for the development of Start-up company and investors' decision-making. The results of this study, and particularly the developed criterion, build avenues for further research on Start-ups and value investment.

Scaling Technology Ventures in Africa: New Opportunities for Research

Research on new venture creation in Africa is growing rapidly. This increasing interest reflects both the potential for entrepreneurship to contribute to the economic and social development of Africa, as well as the potential for this research to provide new insights that challenge and extend theories developed primarily from studies of North American and European new ventures. In this editorial essay, we argue for an expansion of this important research stream to include a focus on how technology ventures scale in Africa. We identify seven topics that offer interesting opportunities for research on scaling in Africa: (1) the effect of venture location on scaling; (2) the effect of founding team diversity on scaling; (3) the effect of entrepreneurial strategies on scaling; (4) the effect of nascent ecosystems on scaling; (5) the effect of the institutional environment on scaling; (6) the effect of nascent financial markets on scaling; and (7) the societal effects of scaling. We discuss each of these topics, their potential to contribute to the existing literature, and provide examples of African technology firms that have scaled to illustrate each topic. We conclude with a discussion of how African social, political, and regulatory change, combined with rapidly developing entrepreneurial ecosystems, are creating a context where the successful scaling of technology ventures is becoming increasingly common, and research is therefore increasingly valuable.

The heavy cost of kumbaya–understanding the survival implications of nascent venture ownership structure

PurposeThis paper brings in relevant entrepreneurial behavior theory to understand the ownership decisions founders make during the nascent stage of new venture creation, and how such decisions impact the viability of the firm.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine the behavior and decision making of 137 lead founders during the nascent stage of new venture creation. Psychological ownership and environmental uncertainty are measured of lead founders when dividing up firm ownership among the founding team. Using a longitudinal approach, these nascent-stage decisions are then analyzed to understand the impact on the new venture one year later.FindingsCounter to prior research suggesting teams are better off with identical wages and ownership, the authors find such harmony (i.e. “kumbaya”) pursuit to be a detriment to new venture emergence. Specifically, this study finds that nascent ventures are better off with an unequal ownership split among the founding team members. These findings suggest that nascent firms with an unequal split are more likely to move beyond the nascent stage and launch a functional business.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the results of this study offer a valuable contribution to lead founders and new businesses, the study looked at each startup independent of another and is therefore not able to draw any conclusions related to competitiveness.Practical implicationsLead founders and founding teams frequently divide ownership evenly among the founders. This paper shows that, while convenient, the decision to divide ownership equally can hamper a nascent firm as it moves toward the launch phase of the startup process. These results should motivate founders to think deeply regarding the ownership structure decision and, at the very least, consider the possible negative costs associated with the pursuit of founding team unity.Originality/valueWhile scholars have brought attention to the nascent stage, few have identified and analyzed the decisions that take place during this critical time of the new venture development process. Furthermore, even is less is known of the impact nascent decisions have on startup launch. This study sheds light on these areas.

Entrepreneurial Bricolage and New Product Development Performance in New Ventures: The Contingent Effects of Founding Team Involvement

New product development (NPD) performance is a key determinant of a new venture’s success. However, compared with established firms, new ventures often suffer from resource constraints when developing new products. Entrepreneurial bricolage is reported in the literature as an alternative strategic option that enables managers to overcome resource constraints when developing new products. However, because new ventures are often founded by an entrepreneurial team, the effectiveness and efficiency of using bricolage to improve NPD performance might be contingent on how the founding team plays its roles in this process. Using data from 323 new ventures in China, we find support for the critical role of entrepreneurial bricolage in improving NPD success under resource constraints. More importantly, our results reveal that the bricolage strategy is more likely to benefit a venture when the founding team is composed of members with diverse functional backgrounds and is not heavily involved in strategic decision-making.