Social networks in entrepreneurial startups development

Abstract

The paper focuses on researching the role of social networking in the development of startup companies in the Czech Republic. The goal is to identify key groups that help startups to set up and develop, identify areas where startups get help through the social networks of their founders and/or key members, and analyze the relationship between the types of the contacts and help provided. The paper presents the results of a deep questionnaire survey of startup founders from 51 out of approximately 1450 startups in the Czech Republic. IBM SPSS Statistics 21 software and Fisher's exact test were used in two-dimensional data analysis at the significance level of 0.05 and 0.01. The results demonstrate the use of strong and weak ties in the establishment and development of a startup business. Key groups include business partners and friends, both in terms of their utilization rates, their key role and the amount of assistance provided, and business angels in terms of fundraising, and technology and marketing advice. The importance of some weak ties does not correspond to their use (both positively and negatively). The results of the survey showed the contradictory role of incubators and accelerators. While 63% of startups used the help of business incubators, the support for building networks and links with the external environment in the incubators seems to be underestimated. Our results imply that the support programs for the startups should include the networking programs with the external parties.

Formal and informal support and the performance of new start-ups: a quantile regression analysis

“…Both the ordinary least squares and quantile regression results suggest that informal support has positive effects, but these effects become weak among relatively high-performing enterprises. These results may be considered similar to previous investigations that found positive effects of the network on the performance of new start-ups, such as Durda and Ključnikov ( 2019 ) and Albourini et al ( 2020 ), or those on the effects of social capital on the performance of new start-ups, such as Liao and Welsch ( 2005 ) and Westlund et al ( 2014 ). Our empirical results are consistent with those previous studies, but their results do not imply that the magnitude of their effects differ according to performance.…”

Significant Aspects of Managing Personnel Risk in the SME Sector

“…Studies support the notion that emphasis must be put on increasing knowledge and consciousness about risk management, especially in eastern Europe, e.g. in the V4 countries, as they majorly depend on SMEs (Hudakova et al, 2018;Durda & Ključnikov, 2019). The similarities between the Czech Republic and Slovakia provide a justifiable platform to compare these twin nations.…”

Controlling, communication and corporate culture – the opportunity for SMEs

“…Controlling as a tool for SMEs with using modern technologies is described also by Weske (2012). Durda & Ključnikov (2019) validated these approaches and develop it in consequences with social networks and startup SME. An interesting view on problematics is also offered by the Association of SME in the Czech Republic (AMSP) which publicly reports about technology and digitalization 2019 in the SMEs sector.…”