Déconstruire les idées reçues sur les start-up, la nouvelle responsabilité dévolue aux acteurs de l’accompagnement entrepreneurial

The intense media coverage of the startup ecosystem has led to the dissemination of misconceptions about entrepreneurship. This article shows that first-time entrepreneurs believe in these misrepresentations. The results of this research therefore give a new prerogative to the actors of the entrepreneurial support world: to deconstruct all the clichés and false representations about startups that are popularized by the press. The article is based on survey data from 90,278 people who revealed their interest in starting a business between 2007 and 2018. We isolate the answers given by digital entrepreneurs (n=1,425) and compare them to those of other respondents (n=88,853). Examining the beliefs of this large panel of respondents shows that digital first-time entrepreneurs believe they can access high revenues, predict success with a high probability, go into entrepreneurship relatively unprepared, and anticipate improved employability if their business fails.