Founder Factories: The Origins of High-Growth Startups

This paper asks whether some employers influence the kinds of startups their employees later build. Using global career-history data matched to startup outcomes, we identify founders' previous employers and build an alumni startup-scale score for each employer. The score captures how often a firm's former employees go on to found startups that become unusually large, after accounting for employer size; it also predicts international reach and acquisition activity. We then study employees whose firms were acquired, which exposed them to new employers with different alumni startup-scale scores. Founders exposed to higher-score acquirers seem more ambitious in terms of scalability of their businesses at launch according to early business descriptions. We show this using archived startup websites from the founding period. These founders' startups later employ more people, operate in more countries, and more often make acquisitions. The patterns are stronger for employees who are integrated into the acquiring firm, and they are not explained by founders simply entering the acquirer's industry, hiring from the acquirer, or receiving financing from it.