Social media, entrepreneurs and accelerators: examining the role of brands and networks

Abstract

In the first empirical study, I investigated ways in which entrepreneurs use social media to drive both the level of engagement for their startup and the subsequent level of venture financing. My empirical analysis demonstrated how differences in entrepreneurs’ tweets—i.e., differences in the level informativity, persuasiveness, and transformativity—is associated with different levels of startup engagement and associate venture financing. Further, I showed differences in entrepreneurs’ activity with the social media platform—i.e., the number of tweets, the number of mentions of other accounts, and the number of retweets—further drives engagement and venture financing. I test my model by collecting an extensive dataset of over 8,000,000 tweets from entrepreneurs and startups that have been through accelerators. Results indicate association between the social media activities of entrepreneurs, startup engagement, and venture financing.

In the second empirical study, I examine the role of accelerators and social media. Over the past several years, accelerators have grown to play a more important role within the startup economy. However, there are little studies examining the mechanisms of how accelerators influence startup performance. Employing a unique dataset, my results provide strong evidence that both accelerator and entrepreneur engagement have a positive influence on startup engagement. Accelerator engagement only has a short-term impact on startup engagement while impact from entrepreneur engagement is more long lasting. I find accelerator engagement has positive but short-term impact on entrepreneur engagement as well. The results also suggest important managerial implications for both accelerators’ and startups’ social media strategies.

This dissertation examines the behavior of entrepreneurs and accelerators on social media channels with the goal of explaining how these channels are utilized to facilitate new venture success. This dissertation is composed a review of the related literature and two empirical studies. In the literature review, I outline past research on entrepreneurship, accelerators, social media, electric word-of-mouth, and online engagement. In the first empirical study, I investigated how entrepreneurs undertake activities on social media to drive their startups to success. In the second empirical study, I examined how accelerators’ use of social media may help entrepreneurs to increase the chance of success with their startups.