Diversity in National Culture and Financial Harvest Exit Strategy in New Technology Ventures

Abstract

We study the effects of diversity in national culture on new technology ventures’ founding teams on their financial harvest exit strategy. Exits represent a pivotal event in the entrepreneurial process that reflects the strategy and performance of technology startups. Following a quasi-replication of the seminal study of Chaganti and colleagues in 2008, aimed at generalizing their findings to different technologies and periods and assessing their robustness, we demonstrate that diverse founding teams are significantly more likely than non-diverse teams to exit via financial harvest. We add to the literature by identifying a novel contributing factor—diversity in national culture—in founding teams’ financial harvest strategies. The economic implications, both at the micro and macro levels, of the diversity factor are considerable. The contribution of this study thus extends beyond the academic literature.