Managers’ international exposure and its influence on international startup performance: an investigation of the Nordic startup community in Silicon Valley

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether a manager’s previous international exposure influences the performance of their international startup firm. A cross-sectional study is performed by using an online survey for data collection on managers’ previous international exposure, complemented by secondary data on performance from online databases. The research is conducted on a sample of 58 managers from 49 international startup companies from the Nordics, which are all present in Silicon Valley. Multiple linear regression and analysis of non-linear relationships is performed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that international exposure gained through studies abroad and work-related international experiences, as well as linguistic capabilities, are the most important factors in predicting international startup performance. The limitations of the thesis relate to the possible difficulty of generalizability due to the sample size, and the chosen research design, which makes it difficult to establish causality of the relationships. Future studies should conduct the same research on different samples and use other research designs to get more comprehensive knowledge about managers’ international exposure and international startup performance. Keywords: International new ventures; startups; firm performance; entrepreneurs; managers; international exposure; international startups.