The Influence of Founder Collaborations on Venture Knowledge Quality

We seek to understand how prior collaborative relationships of venture founders can persistently influence their firms’ knowledge development. We examine if the subsequent innovative output of such collaborators is associated with higher knowledge quality of the focal venture, and whether this effect changes with collaborator attributes such as their location and employment. We also study if post-founding initiatives such as alliances and hiring can compensate for the founders’ lack of ties to talented collaborators. We test our theory on a sample of biotechnology ventures founded from 1990-2000, tracking the knowledge they create in the first ten years after founding. While we find that pre-founding collaboration has continuing positive impacts on ventures’ knowledge development, such starting advantages can be partially compensated for by post-founding initiatives.