Three Essays on Entrepreneurial Challenges: Dual-Mission Funding and Collaborative Innovation

Entrepreneurship requires addressing diverse external pressures as startups pursue growth. This dissertation studies three critical challenges faced by entrepreneurs: the impact of large incumbents, the difficulties in securing funding for ventures with dual missions, and the complexities of managing intellectual property (IP) in collaborative open-source communities. The first study investigates how large incumbents’ mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and corporate venture capital investments (CVCs) shape market-level startup activities along the artificial intelligence (AI) technology evolution. The findings highlight the dual role of incumbents in creating opportunities for innovation while potentially limiting competition, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between large corporations and startup innovation along the technology maturation. The second study focuses on sustainability-driven (SD) ventures that balance economic goals with societal impact. These ventures often experience funding delays as their dual mission challenges traditional VC evaluation processes and raises agency concerns. By analyzing a global dataset, this study identifies factors that mitigate these delays, offering practical insights into how SD ventures can secure funding more efficiently and scale their innovative solutions to address pressing environmental and social challenges. The third study looks into governance in open-source software (OSS) startups, emphasizing how intellectual property (IP) strategies serve as strategic human resource tools to influence contributor participation, which directly impacts startup performance. Decisions such as implementing Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and selecting Open-Source License (OSL) type are critical in influencing collaboration and innovation within the OSS community. The findings highlight the essential role of balancing governance control with community engagement to effectively manage human resources, so that maintaining a competitive edge. Together, these three studies provide a multidimensional perspective on entrepreneurship, revealing how startups strategically handle with external pressures to sustain growth and innovation.