Founder Gender and Firm Exit Routes: The Mediating Roles of Firm Size and VC Financing
Document Type
Article
Keywords
AOM annual meeting proceedings 2024; AOM Chicago; entrepreneurship
Publisher
Academy of Management
Publication Source
Academy of Management Journal
Rights Management
Copyright of Academy of Management Journal
Abstract
While it is well established that founder gender influences starting and managing new ventures, little is known about the influence of founder gender on firm exits. In this paper, by drawing on liberal feminist and social feminist theories, we argue that female entrepreneurs are less likely to have positive exits via M&As and IPOs, and that firm size venture capital (VC) financing are two important factors mediating this relationship. We test our hypothesis using data from Crunchbase dataset on 18,495 new ventures in the US and find that firm size and VC financing fully mediate the negative relationship between female-founded firms and IPOs, but partially mediate the negative relationship between female-founded firms and M&As. These results are robust to propensity score matching. This paper provides valuable contributions to the entrepreneurship literature by explicitly investigating the mechanisms through which gender influences probabilities of positive firm exits via M&A or IPO and has important practical implications for policymakers.
