Edward Marram

Born Lucky? A Study of the Birthdates and Ages of Paradigm-Shifting Entrepreneurs

We studied the age of entrepreneurs at the time when they started companies that made significant contributions to the birth and growth of the micro/personal computer industry; we also looked at their birthdates. The main reason for our study was to test Gladwell’s widely disseminated assertion that paradigm changers in that industry were born between 1953 and 1955 and were 25 years old or younger when they started their ventures. In contrast to Gladwell’s sample of just three companies, Apple, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems, and the seven entrepreneurs who founded them, our data set comprised 74 companies and 89 entrepreneurs. Unlike Gladwells’s seven entrepreneurs, all of whom were born between 1953 and 1955, our 89 entrepreneurs — including the Gladwell seven — were born between 1917 and 1965 and their average age when they started their ventures was 34.

Legitimation of Cleantech Companies: Venture Capital Financing and Federal Government Funding

We studied 56 venture-capital-backed companies that received financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy. We argued that those companies derived their legitimacy with the DOE in large part from their lobbying in Washington and from their venture capital firms. We reasoned that the greater their legitimacy from the viewpoint of the DOE, the more federal funding they received. We found that the amount of federal funding correlated with the amount of venture capital and with the amount spent on lobbying, but not with the reputation of their venture capital firms. Companies received, on average, one dollar of federal funding for each dollar of venture capital.