Title: Contribution of the co-founder to new business performance

Authors: Tatsuyoshi Masuda

Addresses: Department of Economics, Hokusei Gakuen University, Atsubetu-ku, Sapporo 004 0042, Japan

Abstract: The economic performance of the new business founders depends on the existence of the co-founder as well as their managerial works of new business. The existence of the co-founder, all else remaining equal, contribute to increase the actual sales more than 60%. Furthermore, the empirical results show that the profitable new founders employ the specific |staff| within the firm as the co-founder, and perform cooperatively at the sales/public relations work with their co-founder. The cooperative work at the sales/public relations suggests that because a day after start-up is not long, founder and his co-founder still devote themselves to the increasing of sales in solidarity. When complementing the founder|s personnel management work with the accounting/finance work for co-founder, the new firm achieved higher sales. These findings indicate for new founders to be profitable, the importance of their interdependent relationships in managerial works as well as the existence of and the choice of co-founder.

Keywords: co-founders; complementary relationships; cooperative relationships; economic performance; growth-orientated goals; Japan; previous business experience; sales; public relations; spouse; new business; business founders; start-ups; new ventures; personnel management; accounting; finance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2009.024614

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2009 Vol.3 No.4, pp.435 - 456

Published online: 10 Apr 2009 *

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