Paving the Way to Success: Linking the Strategic Ecosystem of Entrepreneurial Start-Ups with Market Performance

Entrepreneurial endeavors are pivotal to development and growth. Therefore, it is critical to recognize and prioritize the need for building new, sustainable businesses that will create and offer products and services aligned with the interests of diverse stakeholders. Considering that the success of early-stage firms is shaped by both internal factors and external conditions, the aim of this study is to examine the prospects for sustainability of entrepreneurial start-ups by assessing how their strategic ecosystem influences market performance, a key metric of their capacity to successfully compete and survive. To identify performance precursors, we surveyed the founders of 108 new ventures regarding a broad range of internal determinants—including strategic factors, human resources, networking with external partners, pre-entry funding choices, and board profiles—while controlling for external influences. Our findings suggest that the performance differentials across these firms can be largely attributed to their human assets, strategic foundation, and board heterogeneity, as reflected in gender diversity in decision boards and the number of founders. Service start-ups and those that have been found in urban centers were also associated with better performance compared to manufacturing new ventures and those located in a country’s periphery. In the opposite direction, funding choices and established partnership-based networks were not related to successful market penetration. Likewise, the impact of start-ups’ industry growth, the rate of technology obsoletion, as well as several other macro-environmental influences show limited impact.