New Venture Growth: Role of Ecosystem Elements and Prior Experience

Entrepreneurial ecosystems provide a rich context for analyzing entrepreneurial outcomes such as new venture growth. In most entrepreneurship research, influence of context or environment is undermined or controlled. Also, most studies consider either macro- or micro-level factors using single-level analysis, which mute the higher-level influences on new firm growth. To overcome these gaps, we empirically consider macro- and micro-level factors together, and their cross-level interactions to portray the nexus of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystem in growth of new independent ventures in the various US metros. Our findings provide interesting insights on the moderating effects of prior experiences of founders on ecosystem attributes and firm growth.