Gender ethnicity and entrepreneurship RP

Please cite this article in press as: Kenney, M., Patton, D., Gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship in initial public offerings: illustrations
from an open database*. Res. Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2015.01.003
ARTICLE IN PRESSG Model
RESPOL-3103; No.of Pages12
Research Policy xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/respol
Gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship in initial public offerings:
illustrations from an open database*ଝ
Martin Kenney∗
, Donald Patton
Community and Regional Development Unit, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 4 January 2015
Accepted 8 January 2015
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Initial public offerings
Board of directors
Management teams
Gender
Ethnicity
a b s t r a c t
This paper describes the variables in a freely available database of all emerging growth firms (EGF) that
made an initial stock offering (IPO) on US public markets from 1990 through 2010. Our expectation is
that researchers from a variety of disciplines can use this data to answer a wide variety of social science
questions and combine it with other databases. To illustrate how the data can be used, we describe the
gender and nationality of the top management teams (TMTs) and board of directors (BoDs) of these
firms. We confirm that women are under-represented in all functional positions, but, in contrast to
much of the popular press, we find that statistically Silicon Valley firms perform better than the national
average. Gender ratios differ by function with women most prevalent at the CFO position and are most
prevalent in the biomedical industry. Using undergraduate education, as an identifier for nationality, we
find that, contrary to the popular press, there are more European than Asian immigrants in the TMTs. This
suggests that European immigrants are more likely to immigrate with advanced degrees, while the Asian
immigrants have only Bachelor’s degrees. In the immigration literature, it has been observed that specific
immigrant groups concentrate in particular occupations. To test for this effect, we study the backgrounds
of all identifiable Taiwanese immigrants. A remarkably high concentration of Taiwanese TMT members
were from two Taiwanese universities’ electrical engineering departments, then received U.S. graduate
degrees, particularly from UC Berkeley, and entered semiconductor-related industries. This database
will contribute to reproducible social science as the same quality-controlled data is now available to all
researchers.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In the U.S. political economy, the life-cycle of the most success-
ful entrepreneurial firms usually contains an initial public offering
(IPO). From a macro-political economy perspective these firms,
while a highly select population, are inherently significant, because
they include nearly all of the largest firms created in the last
two decades. From an analytical perspective, studying IPO firms
is advantageous because U.S. legal requirements mandate that the
listing firm provide detailed information on its operations and key
persons. Their importance, combined with the level of detailed
information revealed at their public offering, make these firms of
ଝ The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foun-
dation Science of Science Policy Program award #08-004743. The authors thank
Maryann Feldman and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and sugges-
tions. We also thank Casey Castaldi for her research assistance.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 5307520328.
E-mail addresses: mfkenney@ucdavis.edu (M. Kenney), dfpatton@ucda-vis.edu
(D. Patton).
great inherent interest to scholars and policy-makers, alike. New
entrepreneurial firms, many of which are funded by venture cap-
ital, are an important component of the U.S. national innovation
system (on U.S., see Mowery 1992 on venture capital, see Kenney,
2011). In this innovation model, particularly in information, com-
munication, and biomedical technology-related entrepreneurship,
an initial public stock offering is an important step in the firm’s life.
With a few notable exceptions, such as SAS and Epic Systems, over
the last five decades successful U.S. technology-based firms have
either been acquired or have undertaken IPOs.
This paper describes a freely available database of all
entrepreneurial firms undertaking an initial public stock offering
during the twenty-one year period from 1990 through 2010.1 We
1
Since 2010 we have provided data to more than 150 researchers. Most of the
requests have come from doctoral students in business schools, including UC Berke-
ley, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Wharton, but we have also had requests from university
faculty and research staff as well as numerous research institutes such as Brookings
and the World Bank. Data has been provided to the venture capital-financed firm
Findthebest.com and The Private Capital Research Institute.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2015.01.003
0048-7333/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

2 M. Kenney, D. Patton / Research Policy xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
select a few salient variables regarding gender and national origin
to illustrate potential uses of the database to answer a number of
scholarly questions, especially in regards to entrepreneurship in
a variety of sectors, but particularly the science and technology-
based firms that make up more than 50 percent of the entire firm
population.
Because the database is an Excel format, the ability to combine
it with other databases, public or private, should accelerate fur-
ther research on entrepreneurship in the social and management
sciences. The value of this database is not only intrinsic, but also
in the fact that it can be rather easily linked to a wide variety of
other databases including Starmetrics database described by Lane
et al. (2015) (in this issue) and the patent database described by
Li et al. (2014). The database can also be extended by using other
commonly available databases such as VenturExpert, CRISP stock
price data, the NETS database, and other commercial databases pro-
viding data extracted from financial filings. Other uses could be to
examine the effects of policies such as the SBIR Program in creating
successful firms or the fate of university spinoffs. In essence, this is
a resource that others can build upon in their research.
This brief contribution describes the database and undertakes
some simple illustrations of how it might be used. The first sec-
tion discusses IPOs and previous usage of the data from IPOs in
academic papers. This is followed by a description of the publicly
available variables in the database. The first illustration of the uses
of the database is an exploration of gender issues in these firms by
various managerial and directorial functions and differences based
upon industry or geography. The second illustration is a descrip-
tion of the national origin of the managers of these firms, including
a discussion of the education of these managers with particular
emphasis on foreign PhDs. To further demonstrate the value of the
database we examine aspects of the career trajectories of all Tai-
wanese university graduates serving on the TMTs. The concluding
section suggests some benefits that such an open-source database
may provide to the scholarly community
2. IPOs
An IPO is a singular event in a new firm’s life-cycle when its tran-
sitions from being private to being publicly held. Because of the high
bar for undertaking a public offering, IPO firms are among the most
successful and for this reason alone are of great interest. The other
attraction is the level of detailed information that encompasses key
personnel, firm promoters, significant business contacts (such as
alliances with other organizations) and various other disclosures.
Naturally, its uses for scholarly purposes have not gone unnoticed.
Of particular interest has been the attributes of top managers and
board members (e.g., Amason et al., 2006; Beckman et al., 2007;
Chen et al., 2008; Cohen and Dean, 2005; Higgins and Gulati, 2006;
Kim and Higgins, 2007). Another field of research has exploited the
disclosures to examine the affiliations of IPO firms and their back-
ers with other organizations (Pollock and Gulati, 2007; Hochberg
et al., 2007). For example, Gulati and Higgins (2003) extracted data
from a sample of biotechnology IPO firms to explain the signaling
value of different types of interorganizational partnerships in the
contexts of different types of uncertainty and found that venture
capital endorsements were most important during “cold” markets,
while investment bank endorsements were more beneficial during
“hot” markets.
Founder retention in entrepreneurial firms is of interest both
in finance and general management. The employment of one or
more of the founders at the time of the IPO has been found to
increase a firm’s value by sending a positive signal to investors
(Certo et al., 2001; Fischer and Pollock, 2004; Jain and Tabak,
2008; Nelson, 2003). Little is known about whether function affects
founder retention. There is evidence that retention may also be
higher for the technical founders than for the general managers,
though this has not been tested on a large sample of IPOs (Boeker
and Karichalil, 2002). Pollock et al. (2009) found that CEO-founders
were more likely to be present at the IPO when there was greater
business certainty in the particular sector. Put differently, when the
sector was competitive and uncertain the founder was less likely
to be CEO at the time of the IPO. The addition of high-prestige CEO
replacing the founder may be the result of the firm wishing to cre-
ate the perception of legitimacy among public investors (Chen et al.,
2008; Cohen and Dean, 2005).
Despite the intense interest in entrepreneurship, and the fact
that many of best known U.S. technology firms including Microsoft,
Intel, Oracle, Google, and Yahoo! retained their founders in key
positions through the IPO and beyond, there has been minimal
research on the persistence of founders from the firm’s inception
to a liquidity event such as an IPO and its impact on firm perfor-
mance (for exceptions, see Beckman and Burton 2008; Beckman
et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2012).
IPOs have also been used in agency theory studies, because the
firms are undergoing a transition from privately held firms with
principals such as venture capitalists closely monitoring the firm’s
behavior, to a situation where they are being monitored by less
engaged actors such as securities analysts. This interest unleashed
a wave of studies regarding the board composition at the time of the
IPO (Beatty and Zajac, 1994; Certo, 2003; Filatotchev et al., 2006;
Bruton et al., 2010).
While there has been significant use of IPO data to ask questions
specifically related to IPOs, there is a much larger research commu-
nity that should be able to use portions of the database in ongoing
projects in which IPOs only play a small part. For example, indus-
try studies students might find it useful to extract data on IPOs in
specific industries, or just identify the IPOs in a particular industry.
Studies of the spatial agglomeration or specializations of venture
capital firms could utilize IPOs as a success measurement. A cross-
national comparison of high-impact entrepreneurship is receiving
more attention through venues such as the Global Entrepreneur-
ship Monitor, but there have been fewer comparisons between IPOs
in different markets (Doidge et al., 2013).2 The information in our
database could simplify conducting such comparisons because the
U.S. data is now available in an easily usable form. Because U.S. stock
markets are the mecca for foreign EGFs, it is possible to compare
U.S., Chinese, and Israeli EGFs that list on U.S. markets.3
there is a list and description of the data that we have extracted
and is already provided or in the future will be provided on request.
In addition to the firm data, we have assembled a database of all the
managers and directors of these firms as listed in IPO prospectus,
where each unique individual is given an ID as some individuals
were involved in more than one IPO (this is a unique feature of the
database and will save substantial time for researchers).
Because this is a database of EGF IPOs, it is a subset of all firms
that have gone public. The database currently contains 3939 firms
and 43,695 individuals who were managers and directors of these
firms. However, because some portions of the 1990–1996 data are
not yet fully completed, we confine the substantive illustrations to
the 2028 firms that conducted an IPO between 1996 and 2010 and
that were under 30 years of age at the time of their IPO. We are now
expanding the database through 2014. For the years from 1990 to
2
Jay Ritter has eased this comparison process as his website
http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/ipodata.htm has information on where
data for IPOs in other nations can be accessed.
3
This may be particularly interesting in the case of China, as many key Chinese
Internet firms have listed on US markets. For example, Sina.com is an analog of
Yahoo!, Baidu resembles Google, 51 Jobs resembles Monster.com, etc.

M. Kenney, D. Patton / Research Policy xxx (2015) xxx–xxx 3
Table 1
Variables included in emerging growth firm IPO database.
Data currently available Future data availability
Firm data 1990–2010
Company ID/CIK number Law firm name and address, 1996–2010
Company name Investment banks, 1996–2006
Year of the IPO. Number of employees data text
State of incorporation Number of employees at IPO
Company street address After-IPO employment by year 1996–2010
Stock exchange After-IPO revenue by year 1996–2010a
Stock symbol IPO firm fate through 1996–2010–continuing operation, merger, delisting
Shares offered
Shares outstanding
Initial share price
Offer size
Underwriter discount
Company auditor
SEC 4-digit SIC
Firm 4-digit SIC
Year firm founded
Unit offering Y/N
Internet firm Y/N
IPO prospectuses after OCR, 1990–1996 (by request)
IPO TMT and BoD variables, 1990–2010
Individual unique identifier Venture capitalist Y/N
Full name University education by degreeb
Age at the time of the IPO. University address
Company Position Address for BoD members, 1996–2010b
TMT and BoD member’s biography Firm founder or co-founderb
Gender Founder or co-founder of another for-profit firmb
Legend: bold are totals and unbolded are sub-totals.
a
This data is from CRSP and thus cannot be open-sourced, but will be provided on an individual request basis.
b
When reported. For certain variables, the SEC data was augmented by Internet searches.
Fig. 1. Emerging growth firm IPOs by Year 1990–2010.
2010, the EGF database accounts for around 77% of all domestic
firms that went public. There were 2247 EGF IPOs from June 1996
to 2010. Fig. 1 shows that the number of IPOs differed dramatically
by year. The drop of IPOs after the end of the Dot.com Bubble in
2000 was dramatic and for the decade was lower than anytime in
the 1990s.8
The industrial composition of these emerging growth IPOs is
shown in Table 2. All but 42 firms can be classified based on their
4-digit Standard Industrial Code.9 We group these into one of six
basic industry sectors along with those identified as Internet firms.
8
For an explanation of this drop, see Gao et al. (2013).
9
The data for these 42 firms were extracted from older pdf documents that lacked
an SIC assignment.
The largest single sector is Information and Computer Technology
(ICT), which was responsible for 22.7% of all IPOs and, if combined
with the Internet (11.3%), comprised exactly 34% of all EGF IPOs.
Because the address of each firm is included, the geographic dis-
tribution of IPOs can be analyzed at any level needed (Kenney et al.,
2012: 14–16; Patton and Kenney 2005). EGFs are concentrated in a
few states (see Table 3
3. Database description and overview
Any firm intending to sell its stock to the public on U.S. markets
must file a publicly available prospectus with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission prior to the offering. Prior to the offer-
ing, the issuing firm must make significant disclosures about its
operations, management, and governance. It was not until June

Table 2
Emerging growth IPOs by industry sector and component, 1990–2010.
Basic Sector Sector Components Count Count Percent of Total
Bio-medical 464 11.9
Biotechnology 281 7.2
Medical Instruments 183 4.7
ICT 883 22.7
Communications 112 2.9
Computer Systems 76 2.0
Computers 125 3.2
Electronic Equipment 116 3.0
Semiconductors 104 2.7
Software 259 6.6
Telephone and Telegraph 91 2.3
Internet 440 11.3
Retail 437 11.2
Retail Trade 278 7.1
Wholesale Trade 159 4.1
Services 506 13.0
Business Services 82 2.1
Computer Programming 69 1.8
Computer Services 59 1.5
Health Services 116 3.0
Services 180 4.6
Manufacturing 435 11.2
General Instruments 64 1.6
Machinery 97 2.5
Manufactured Goods 274 7.0
Other 732 18.8
Total 3, 897 100.0
No SIC 42
Database Total 3, 939
1996 that public firms were required to make all of their documents
Internet accessible. Therefore, online access to all IPO documents
for firms going public only begins in June 1996. For IPOs prior to
June 1996, we relied on IPO registration statements and prospec-
tuses that were scanned into either PDF or TIFF format. It is from
these documents that the data for IPOs from January 1990 through
May 1996 were obtained. Because the data is derived from publicly
available sources we can freely distribute it.
The database is comprised of all emerging growth firm (EGF)
initial public offerings on American stock exchanges and filed with
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from January 1990
through December 2010. In assembling the set of firms to be
included we relied on Thomson Financial Venture Expert, SDC data
and other sources to generate a list of all IPOs over this time period.4
Our interest in IPOs is centered on new firm formation. Because
of this interest we have chosen to restrict our data collection to
emerging growth, or de novo, firms that have gone public.5
Emerging growth refers to newly established firms, or firms that
are not based on older firms by being a spinoff or subsidiary opera-
tion. The emerging growth status of firms was established through
examination of the prospectus, particularly in the summary where
the firm describes its activities, history, and business. Usually the
emerging growth status of a firm going public can be readily deter-
mined. Companies that are the product of a merger are considered
emerging growth, if they have had some history of operation prior
to the IPO, while companies that are reorganizations of existing
firms are not. Any firm that originated as a new, independent entity
and remained independent throughout its history is considered to
4
There are many lists of IPOs, none identical to the other. Although we relied
primarily on SDC data, we worked closely with Jay Ritter to develop a list of EGF
IPOs (Kenney et al., 2012). In the process of matching the lists both our database and
Ritter’s was improved. Ritter had 31 IPOs that we had missed confining ourselves to
SDC data (approximately 1.5%), and misclassifications in both databases were found
and corrected.
5
Jay Ritter has recently updated tables and statistics on IPOs from 1960 to the
present on his website http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/.
Table 3
EGF IPOs by industry class among the top five states, 1990–2010.
Basic Class California N. Y. Mass Texas Florida Top 5
Internet 184 40 40 18 14 296
% of Class 42% 9% 9% 4% 3% 67%
Bio-medical 174 24 66 14 15 293
% of Class 38% 5% 14% 3% 3% 63%
ICT 368 37 92 46 32 575
% of Class 42% 4% 10% 5% 4% 65%
Retail 80 41 11 42 37 211
% of Class 18% 9% 3% 10% 8% 48%
Services 99 56 33 39 28 255
% of Class 20% 11% 7% 8% 6% 50%
Manufacturing 106 33 21 34 17 211
% of Class 24% 8% 5% 8% 4% 49%
Other 119 76 24 94 52 365
% of Class 16% 10% 3% 13% 7% 50%
No SIC 11 1 5 2 2 21
Total 1,141 308 292 289 197 2,227
% of Total 29% 8% 7% 7% 5% 57%
be an EGF.6 The database, itself, has significant value because it
is a curated list of emerging growth IPOs, thereby eliminating the
necessity for scholars to examine prospectuses themselves – a sub-
stantial time savings.7 The SEC filings provide an enormous amount
of information on the listing firm. In Table 1) with over half located
in California, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas. California alone
is home to 29% of the total. The distribution is particularly concen-
trated in the Internet, ICT, and bio-medical sectors where California
6
As does Ritter, we exclude the following types of firms and filings: mutual funds,
real estate investment trusts (REITs), asset acquisition or blank check companies,
ADRs, and foreign F-1 filers. These are common exclusions in studies of IPOs, but
we include some types of filings (unit offerings) and firms (banks) that are often
excluded (see Ritter and Welch 2002: 1797). For these firms, we include a dummy
variable so that researchers can exclude them, if they wish.
7
Ritter provides lists of growth capital-sponsored and roll-up IPOs, for further
information, see http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/ipodata.htm.

accounted for approximately 40% of all EGFs. The top five states
account for well over 60% of the total IPOs in these three sectors.10
The geographical data provided above is available from some
commercial IPO databases, though we have more thoroughly vet-
ted the EGFs. More significantly, for geographers we have identified
the location of all of the venture capitalists on the board of direc-
tors. One significant contribution here is that each venture capitalist
was searched by name allowing their attribution to the correct loca-
tion for multilocational venture capital firms. This is a significant
improvement because nearly all previous research on the geogra-
phy of linkages between firms and venture capitalists has attributed
the venture capital activity to the headquarters (see, for example,
Sorenson and Stuart 2001 among many others), when, as Chen
et al. (2010) show, most larger venture capital firms have multi-
ple offices.11 We also locate the EGF’s law firm. With the venture
capitalists on the board, the firm’s law firm, and the investment
bank’s law firm (a proxy for the location of the lead investment
banker), one can understand the location of some key intermedi-
aries in an EGF’s growth (for the use of this data, see Buhr and
Smith, 2010; Kenney and Patton, 2005). Of particular interest in
the future will be to examine the evolution of these intermediaries
in an emerging industry such as the Internet, for which we have
the entire population.12 In the next two sections, we turn to some
illustrative applications
4. Illustrative applications – gender and national origin
In the following applications of this data we restricted our atten-
tion to EGFs that were less than 30 years old at the time of their IPO.
We also limited our attention to IPOs from June 1996 to 2010 for
which we extracted the gender of all managers and directors, as
well as the educational background of all managers and directors
reporting their education.
5. Gender and IPOs
The topic of gender and entrepreneurship has received signifi-
cant media and academic attention (e.g., Robb and Watson 2012).
The 2013 IPO of the social media firm Twitter heightened inter-
est in the topic of gender in the management and direction of
technology firms, especially those headquartered in Silicon Val-
ley (e.g., Kristof, 2013). Despite the now voluminous research on
the impact of top management team (TMT) diversity, the results
on its effect are inconsistent (Cannella et al., 2008). Similarly, thus
far in terms of IPO performance the evidence for gender discrimi-
nation is mixed (Mohan and Chen 2004; Welbourne et al., 2007).
However, other studies have suggested that discrimination may
be occurring. To illustrate, a recent experimental study asking MBA
students to rate IPO prospectuses found that “despite identical per-
sonal qualifications and firm financials, female founders/CEOs were
perceived as less capable than their male counterparts, and IPOs led
by female founders/CEOs were considered less attractive invest-
ments,” (Bigelow et al., 2012). While not using gender as a variable,
10
It is notable with the greater granularity that is possible with the database,
industrial clusters such as Houston in oil-related activities and Minnesota in medical
devices do become visible.
11
This problem of attribution is impossible to correct without having the name of
the venture capitalists. Given that this entire genre of papers is about social networks
and in venture capital the networks are between individuals, i.e., entrepreneurs and
individual venture capitalists, this can lead to spurious findings regarding distance.
12
As mentioned earlier, the definition of the population depends on the definition
of an Internet firm. In a broad definition that includes data communications equip-
ment and semiconductor firms such as Cisco and Broadcom, we would not have the
entire population. If Internet refers to worldwide web-based firms only, then, given
our coverage from 1990 to 2010, we have the entire industry.
Zimmerman (2008) found that general TMT diversity had a positive
effect on the amount of capital raised.
In 2014 the law firm, Fenwick and West (2014) reported the
representation of women in the management teams or board of
directors of 150 largest public Silicon Valley technology firms and
compared it to that of the top S&P 100 firms.13 Their study includes
a number of now mature firms such as Hewlett Packard, Intel, and
others where the executives no longer have any relationship to the
firm’s entrepreneurial period. This makes it possible to compare
the gender composition by function in the EGFs with firms in the
S&P 100 and the SV 150. During the time period under study both
the S&P 100 and the SV 150 public firms experienced percentage
increases in women in all positions (see Table 4). For example, at the
CEO level for the SV 150 there was an increase from zero in 1996 to
2.7 percent in 2013, while the S&P 100 increased from 0 in 1996 to 6
percent in 2013. For our EGFs, women CEOs comprised 3.1 percent.
For all groups of firms, women were between three and four times
more likely to be CFOs than CEOs. Both S&P 100 and SV 150 saw
dramatic increases in the percentage of CFOs (from approximately
2% to 10.1% and 13.3%, respectively), while for the EGFs the CFOs
were 9.5%.
When the entire TMT is considered, women made up approx-
imately 5% in 1996 for both the S&P 100 and SV 150, but both
increased markedly in 2013 to 14.7% and 11.5%, respectively (see
Table 4). In contrast, women in the TMT increased only slightly
in the IPO firms. The women board members among the existing
firms increased significantly from 1996, 11% and 1%, respectively,
to 19.9% and 9.1% in 2013, while for IPOs only 5% of the direc-
tors were women. The proportion of women directors, though,
did increase among the IPO firms suggesting that political pres-
sure for increased representation may have been effective. As a
general rule, in the 1990s, despite having low numbers of women
involved in the TMT or BoD, EGFs initially compared favorably to
both the S&P 100 and SV 150, but by 2013 lagged the public firms.
This suggests that firms subject to public disclosure and pressure
they are more likely to respond, but when private may make deci-
sions based on other criteria, such as, homophily and strong-tie
network constraints (McPherson et al., 2001; Ruef et al., 2003).14
The changes in Table 4 suggest that the increased concern
regarding the representation of women in TMT positions and on
BoDs had an impact. For this reason, it might be expected that there
were changes overtime in the percentages of women at various
positions in our firm population. However, Fig. 2 shows that there
was, at best, only a slight change over time, with the single excep-
tion that the proportion of female directors did have a slight, but
significant increase from 1996 to 2010.15
In 2014, popular press articles and even the U.S. president
faulted Silicon Valley, in particular, for having an under-
representation of women in various top management and director
positions (see, for example, Huddleston, 2014). Contrary to expec-
tations, our data finds that Silicon Valley EGFs have a higher
percentage of female CEOs than in any other region and the national
average (5.2% versus 3.1%) (See Table 5). The relatively open and
performance-based networks in the region may be more accept-
ing of women executives and directors (Cohen and Fields 2000).16
13
Fenwick and West adopt the San Jose Mercury News definition of Silicon Valley
as consisting of Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa
counties.
14
It is difficult to measure or define “competence,” as a criteria for appointing
individuals to these various positions.
15
The increase in the proportion of non-executive women directors from 1996 to
2010 was significant at the .05 level. All other changes in the proportion of women
over time in other capacities were not significantly different from zero.
16
On general network openness in Silicon Valley, see Cohen and Fields (2000). For
a more formal effort to model these networks, see Fleming and Frenken (2007).

Table 4
Number and Percent Women by Function in All EGF IPOs from 1996–2010, Silicon Valley 150 and S&P 100 Public Firms in 1996 and 2013.
IPO
personnel
total
IPO
personnel
women
Silicon Valley 150
1996
Silicon Valley 150
2013
Standard and Poor’s
100
1996
Standard and Poor’s
100
2013
Total 24,509 2,080
% Women 8.5%
Directors 9,906 499
% Women 5.0% ∼1% 9.1% ∼11% 19.9%
TMT 14,603 1,581
% Women 10.8% ∼5% 11.5% ∼5% 14.7%
CEO 2,028 63
% Women 3.1% 0% 2.7% 0% 6.0%
CFO 2,004 191
% Women 9.5% ∼2% 13.3% ∼2% 10.1%
TMT w/t CEO and CFO 10,571 1,327
% Women 12.6%
C-level technical 582 6
% Women 1l0% 0% 10.0% 0% 5.0%
Twenty four individuals had a joint function of CEO/CFO. All of these were counted as CEOs only. Percentages of women directors and TMT for the SV 150 and the S&P 100
were the average percentage of women directors and TMT with each firm. Only chief-level technical, scientific, and medical officers (CTO, CSO, and CMO) were counted as
C-level technical personnel. For the SV 150 and S&P 100 these percentages were the percentage of companies with a woman CTO or other top technology, engineering or
R&D executive.
Fig. 2. Percentage women by function in year of firm’s IPO, 1996–2010.
Table 5
Number and percent women for various management positions and directors by regions, 1996–2010.
CEOs CFOs Directors TMT TMT w/t CEO and CFO Totalpersonnel
Silicon Valley 22 49 124 391 320 515
% Women 5.2% 11.7% 5.8% 12.0% 13.3% 9.5%
Southern California 3 24 43 171 144 214
% Women 1.4% 11.6% 4.3% 11.7% 13.7% 8.7%
New York State 7 15 45 149 127 194
% Women 4.6% 10.1% 6.6% 13.7% 16.2% 11.0%
Massachusetts 3 10 39 118 105 157
% Women 2.0% 6.6% 4.9% 10.3% 12.5% 8.1%
AllOther 28 93 248 752 631 1,000
% Women 2.6% 8.6% 4.7% 9.8% 11.5% 7.7%
Total 63 191 499 1,581 1,327 2,080
% Women 3.1% 9.5% 5.0% 10.8% 12.6% 8.5%
For the second most important position, the CFO, once again, Sili-
con Valley had higher percentages female than other regions and
the national average (11.7% versus 9.5%). Contrary to common wis-
dom, in every category but one, Silicon Valley placed higher than
the national average and had either the highest and next highest
percentage of female involvement. Silicon Valley led other regions
in women in the two top corporate positions, CEO and CFO. From
this we can conclude that while leadership in Silicon Valley EGFs is
absolutely not “representative” of the overall U.S. population, the
performance appears to be somewhat better than other regions.
Chi-square analysis suggests that these observed differences in
women’s participation in Silicon Valley are not random – the TMT
differences from the entire population are significant at the .001
level in every case except for the directors.

Table 6
Percent women for various management positions and directors by industry, 1996–2010 (Number of firms in parentheses).
Basicsector Sector components CEO CFO Directors TMT TMT w/t CEO and CFO Total
Bio-medical (255) 4.3% 10.3% 6.7% 13.1% 15.4% 10.3%
Biotechnology (165) 5.5% 11.7% 7.3% 14.2% 16.4% 11.1%
Medical Instruments (90) 2.2% 7.9% 5.6% 11.3% 13.6% 8.8%
Internet (431) 4.9% 9.8% 5.7% 12.1% 13.7% 9.7%
ICT (419) 1.9% 10.0% 3.5% 7.8% 8.5% 6.2%
Communications (44) 6.8% 13.6% 2.3% 9.2% 8.8% 6.7%
Computer Systems (43) 0% 14.0% 1.9% 9.1% 9.9% 6.6%
Computers (46) 2.2% 4.3% 3.0% 5.8% 6.8% 4.7%
Electronic Equipment (35) 0% 8.8% 2.8% 5.2% 5.5% 4.2%
Semiconductors (69) 0% 7.2% 1.9% 2.3% 1.8% 2.1%
Software (126) 2.4% 10.3% 4.8% 9.6% 10.9% 7.8%
Telephone and Telegraph (56) 1.8% 12.5% 5.7% 10.5% 11.5% 8.7%
All Other (923) 2.5% 9.0% 4.8% 11.0% 13.2% 8.4%
Total (2028) 3.1% 9.5% 5.0% 10.8% 12.6% 8.5%
It is almost axiomatic that industry “recipes” affect a wide vari-
ety of practices (Spender 1989), and in nearly all studies where
industry is used as a control variable it is significant. In Table 6
the percentages of women executives and board members is pre-
sented. First, in the biomedical field, women were more strongly
represented than in the other fields, though there presence was
greatest in certain positions such as finance and human resources.
In the engineering-based fields of information and communication
technologies, the representation among women was low except for
the small group of firms in communications. We expected a larger
representation of women in the Internet firms and this was the case
as 4.9% of the CEOs were female as opposed to 3.1% for all CEOs.
In some sectors, including semiconductors, electronic equipment,
and computer systems, there were few women and no female CEOs.
These results suggest that in the firms whose managers come from
fields such as biology in which there are more women graduates,
there is a relatively higher presence of women.17 In semiconduc-
tors, there are few women in any capacity – an interesting result
given that Intel, the largest semiconductor firm in the world, has a
female president.
While varying by industry and region, our data finds that the
number of women affiliated with EGFs at the time of the IPO is
low. Our data cannot explain the reasons for these outcomes, but,
in combination, with other data such as firm survival, it could be
possible to measure the value of gender diversity. If underrep-
resentation in the STEM disciplinary fields is the first selection
hurdle, gaining experience in an existing firm may be second selec-
tion hurdle, raising venture capital or other funding might be a
third hurdle, and surviving the startup process until an IPO is
likely to be yet another hurdle (Bellucci et al., 2010; Brush et al.,
2002; Cooper et al., 1994; Greene et al., 2001). The final hurdle
would be any biases on the part of investment bankers and pub-
lic investors.18 The lack of initial flow of women seems plausible
enough as women are underrepresented in the STEM fields from
which the high-technology firms emerge, but our data indicates
that the pattern of under-representation extends to retail and ser-
vices where under-enrollment in STEM fields should have little
effect. Our data can only show the individual’s status at the IPO
stage, but our work can be extended by examining whether, at the
17
The differences in the proportion of women across industries among TMT, Direc-
tors, and personnel as a whole were all significant at the .001 level.
18
In this research note, while the data can be derived, we do not analyze the
propensity to add women directors or managers in the lead-up to the initial public
offering or what has been termed “window dressing” (Chen et al., 2008). This is an
interesting question because there may be two opposing forces at work. Namely,
the increasing social demand that women be part of a public firm’s management
team and board of directors and mimetic isomorphic pressure to conform with the
dominant logic of male managers and executives.
time of the IPO, the women are more likely to have been with firm
for a comparatively long-time or have been added immediately
prior to the IPO. Those added immediately prior to the IPO (an action
that has been termed “window-dressing”) would presumably be,
in some measure, added to respond to the predilections of invest-
ment bankers and public investors (e.g., Chen et al. (2008). Finally,
because we have established the educational background, when
reported, for all the individuals associated with the firm, it is possi-
ble to use education as a status measure. In this way, the database
should be valuable for scholars seeking to understand gender and
entrepreneurship in EGFs.
6. National origin of IPO managers
There is significant academic and policy interest in the role of
immigrants in U.S. entrepreneurship (Alarcón, 1999; Portes et al.,
2002; Saxenian, 2006) and in U.S. science and engineering startups
(Kerr 2010, 2013). One drawback is that we have the manage-
ment team at the time of the IPO, rather than the team at the time
of the firm’s founding, and thus the founder question cannot be
addressed directly. A number of methodologies have been used for
the identification of the national origin of founders of American
entrepreneurial firms. The first and most common is direct ques-
tioning through a survey. Survey methodology examples include
Wadhwa et al. (2007) that used telephone interviews where a firm
representative was asked if the firm’s founder was from a foreign
country, and if so, from what country (see, also, Hart and Acs, 2011
for survey research results). This can be further refined by choosing
to survey respondents that belong to ethnic associations, such as
The Indus Entrepreneurs or Monte Jade Association (Dossani, 2002;
Saxenian, 1994, 2002).
A second methodology is determination of national origin based
on inference from individual names. Name inference can be quite
crude, namely anyone with a particular name is categorized as
being of the nationality with than name – a technique that is usu-
ally applied only to Asians or Russians and makes the dubious
assumption that all individuals with an Asian or Russian name are
not US-born. Saxenian (1994, 2002) is an example of the second
approach, as she infers national origin by examining CEO data and
scoring individuals as immigrants if they had a “foreign” name.
A more sophisticated technique is used by Kerr (2010), wherein
census data for the individual’s location is used to attribute a prob-
ability of being born abroad.19
The approach taken here is to identify the national origin of man-
agers on the basis of their post-secondary educations as reported
19
(See, Kerr, 2008 for a description of the algorithm).

Table 7
IPO managers by highest degree obtained, 1996–2010.
PhD and MD JD MA MBA Other Total
USA 901 655 1,092 2,043 3,466 8,157
% of column 71.9% 99.2% 78.7% 94.5% 90.0% 87.6%
Canada 37 3 19 27 76 162
% of column 3.0% 0.5% 1.4% 1.2% 2.0% 1.7%
Other Americas 9 1 3 3 3 19
% of column 0.7% 0.2% 0.2% 0.1% 0.1% 0.2%
United Kingdom 77 1 45 21 141 285
% of column 6.1% 0.2% 3.2% 1.0% 3.7% 3.1%
Other Europe 107 62 23 63 255
% of column 8.5% 4.5% 1.1% 1.6% 2.7%
India 36 86 19 23 164
% of column 2.9% 6.2% 0.9% 0.6% 1.8%
Taiwan 30 32 6 3 71
% of column 2.4% 2.3% 0.3% 0.1% 0.8%
Other Asia 41 30 9 44 124
% of column 3.3% 2.2% 0.4% 1.1% 1.3%
Israel 9 10 7 19 45
% of column 0.7% 0.7% 0.3% 0.5% 0.5%
Africa and other Mideast 6 4 1 2 11
% of column 0.5% 0.3% 0.1% 0.1% 0.1%
Total Foreign 352 5 296 118 385 1156
% of column 28.1% 0.8% 21.3% 5.5% 10.0% 12.4%
Total 1,253 660 1,388 2,161 3,851 9,313
The other category includes all managers whose highest degree is a Bachelor’s degree. It also includes 35 US managers with professional degrees in fields like dentistry,
pharmacy and veterinary science.
in their biographies in the IPO prospectus.20 This methodology has
advantages and drawbacks. The first advantage is that this report
is in a legal document and presumably is accurate. Conversely,
this creates a disadvantage that we attribute nationality to post-
secondary education, which misses immigrants that spent their
entire post-secondary career in the U.S. The other methodologies
attribute nationality to name or place of birth. Consider Jerry Yang,
the founder of Yahoo!, who moved to the U.S. at the age of 10 with
his mother. Technically, he is an immigrant, but should he be con-
sidered an immigrant entrepreneur? There is no best answer to this
question. Also, we attribute nationality to the location of the uni-
versity that awarded their Bachelor’s degree.21 For the remaining
managers the earliest degree determines their nationality start-
ing with a master’s degree, followed by one of the doctoral level
degrees. We believe that this is justified in the overwhelming pre-
ponderance of individuals, but may introduce some error into the
database.
An advantage of our methodology over others is that we are
able to identify Europeans and Canadians; a source of immigrants
that are not easily identified by name recognition programs. This is
significant because the discussion of skilled immigration is almost
entirely focused upon South and East Asians. Remarkably little
attention is given to those from other nations; a tendency that
we show below leads to serious misunderstanding of the role of
immigrants in the U.S. high-technology economy.
Reporting of education is voluntary and thus not complete. In
our population of 14,603 managers, only 9313 managers (63.7%)
disclosed their education (see Table 7). Overall, using our crite-
ria, one in eight managers was educated abroad. The top countries
after the United States, in order of their importance, are the United
Kingdom (285), India (164), Canada (162), Taiwan (71), France (50),
Australia (49), Germany (49), and Israel (45). Not surprisingly, the
20
Those not reporting education are dropped in this analysis. 221,147 managers
and directors reported their education in their biography, but did not reveal their
Bachelor’s degree. In these cases an Internet search was made to fill in their educa-
tion history.
21
1,147 managers and directors reported their education in their biography, but
did not reveal their bachelor’s degree. In these cases an Internet search was made
to fill in their education history.
top three are English-speaking nations, and the remainder have
been closely allied with the United States for decades. Most strik-
ing is the large number of UK-educated managers. Similarly, the
large number of Canadians may not be surprising, but has been
absent in most discussions. In total, Europeans make up almost 6%
of all managers and are more numerous than those from any other
continent. Simply put, this result questions the intense concentra-
tion on East and South Asians in the discussions of immigration and
high-technology business growth. Our data does differ from some-
what from other studies. For example, Hart and Acs (2011) found
that among high-impact, high-tech firm founders, Indians (15.9%)
were the largest group followed by UK (10%), and Canada and Japan
tied for third with 6 percent.22
In addition to using the degree to identify the national origin of
these managers, we also recorded all reported degrees. This per-
mitted classification of the managers by their highest degree.23 For
those reporting education, 13.5%, 1253 out of 9313, held a PhD or
MD. Moreover, managers with at least a Bachelor’s degree from
a foreign university comprised 28.1% percent of the total num-
ber of PhDs and MDs (see Table 7). This is well above the 12.4%
identified as foreign nationals in the entire managerial population.
The standard explanation is that U.S. universities with their high
quality postgraduate programs are a powerful attractant for for-
eign students. This is undoubtedly the case, but there are significant
differences in the population.
Table 8 presents the composition of managers with a PhD. In all
but a few cases the identity of the institution that awarded a PhD
is reported in the biographies of the managers so the nationality of
22
DesRoches et al., 2007 in a similar study confirmed that 16 percent of their
sample were immigrants.
23
The individuals in this population were quite accomplished, with many individ-
uals having multiple higher degrees such as both an MD and a PhD or a PhD and
a JD. So as to not double count individuals, we followed the following scheme for
classifying individuals by highest degree. A PhD was higher than MD and MD was
higher than a JD. At the masters level, an MA or MS was considered to be higher than
an MBA. This relatively arbitrary classification could be changed depending upon a
researcher’s goals. It is likely that in terms of chronological career order, the PhD and
MD were roughly simultaneous, with the MBA coming the last among those indi-
viduals with advanced engineering and scientific degrees. Unfortunately, the year
of the degree was not reported in most cases.

Table 8
TMT PhDs by industry, national origin, and percent of total PhDs granted by U.S.
institutions, 1996–2010.
Bio-medical ICT and Internet All other Total
USA 329 176 230 735
98.5% 98.9% 98.3% 98.5%
Canada 13 10 11 34
46.2% 50.0% 45.5% 47.1%
Other America 4 1 1 6
50.0% 100% 0% 50.0%
UK 41 7 24 72
7.3% 0% 8.3% 6.9%
Other Europe 36 26 27 89
11.1% 19.2% 7.4% 12.4%
India 9 23 4 36
77.8% 87.0% 50.0% 80.6%
Taiwan 6 22 2 30
100% 95.5% 100% 96.7%
Other Asia 12 15 11 38
33.3% 80.0% 36.4% 52.6%
Israel 5 2 2 9
40.0% 50.0% 0% 33.3%
Africa and other Mideast 1 4 1 6
100% 50.0% 0% 50.0%
All Foreign 127 110 83 320
27.6% 60.9% 20.5% 37.2%
Total 456 286 313 1,055
The entry below each cell is the percentage of PhDs in that cell granted by U.S.
institutions.
degree granting institution can be identified. In Table 8 the national
origin of managers holding a PhD is compared to the industrial sec-
tor of the newly public firm. The second entry is the percentage of
doctorates that were awarded by an American university.
Examination of the university granting the Ph.D. for the various
nationalities uncovers some remarkable differences. The overall
conclusion is that the European and Canadian managers have
come to the U.S. with PhDs, while the Asians had only Bachelor‘’
degrees.24 To illustrate the differences, only 5 out of 72 UK man-
agers with a PhD received their degree in the U.S. For all European
PhDs, only 12.4 percent had received their PhD in the U.S. In con-
trast, 29 out of 30 Taiwanese managers with a PhD received their
degree in the U.S. There are also industrial differences, in our pop-
ulation U.S. universities award the highest proportion of PhDs to
foreigners in the ICT industries. Even as the bio-medical sector relies
more on PhDs than any other industry by far, the U.S awards just
27.6% of these degrees to foreigners. Taken as a whole the difference
between Europe and Asia is notable and suggests that the European
immigrants in these types of industries may be more likely to come
to the U.S. with significantly greater human capital than the Asian
immigrants.25 Put differently, in this population at the level of the
individual, Europe transfers greater amounts of invested human
capital to the U.S. than do the East and South Asian nations.
Immigration studies have considered with migratory pathways
and it is possible to partially trace them. In addition to univer-
sity, often discipline is also reported, so it is possible to trace
our respondents to particular degrees and departments. Fig. 3
graphically represents of the career paths of those receiving their
Bachelor’s degree in Taiwan. There are some noteworthy observa-
tions regarding these 71 immigrants. First, nearly half of them, 44%,
held PhDs and served in 43 unique IPO firms, of which 37% were
24
Unfortunately, our data cannot tell us if those immigrants with foreign PhDs
came to the U.S. for post-doctoral training (see Miller and Feldman 2014 for further
discussion of postdoctoral degrees as an under-paid labor force).
25
Not surprisingly, Hunt (2011) finds that the gross contribution by immigrants
can be ranked from highest to lowest in the following order: postdoctoral fellows and
medical residents, graduate students, temporary work visa holders, college students
etc.
in semiconductors or semiconductor design software – a remark-
able concentration. The two leading Taiwanese source universities
were National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei that sent 26 per-
sons and National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu that sent 19; in
total they were responsible for 61 percent of all TMT members. All
of them received advanced degrees in the U.S. Of the 26 National
Taiwan University graduates, 69 percent received U.S. PhDs. There
was concentration in electrical engineering graduates that had a
distinct preference for UC Berkeley electrical engineering and com-
puter science (4), though, in total, there were an almost equal total
number with Stanford PhDs (3). NTU graduates were remarkably
concentrated in the information and communication technology
fields and were affiliated with 42 percent of all the firms and 75% of
all semiconductor-related firms. The second important source uni-
versity was National Chiao Tung in Hsinchu. Interestingly, while its
electrical engineering and computer science departments were key
source departments (63%), only 26 percent of its graduates received
U.S. PhDs and the highest concentration was in pharmaceuticals.
The concentration of Taiwanese in semiconductors is not sur-
prising, as Saxenian (1994, 2002) and Dossani (2002) found similar
results in their studies of Taiwanese entrepreneurs in Silicon Val-
ley. The UC Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science has a long history of admitting Taiwanese to
its graduate programs, and, particularly, in semiconductor engi-
neering. There appears to be a path from electrical engineering at
National Taiwan University.26 Because of the relatively small N,
we cannot definitively answer questions about immigrants, but
it is possible to illustrate pathways and the data reinforces the
observation about the importance of graduate degrees at research
universities as recruitment and vetting institutions for talented
Asians. These results suggest that these highly skilled immigrants
may be reproducing recruitment networks similar to those docu-
mented among low-skilled immigrants (e.g., Bashi 2007; Harvey
2008; Sanders et al., 2002).
Immigration to the U.S. by highly trained individuals and par-
ticularly the role of U.S. universities in the attraction of skilled
individuals has received significant interest (e.g., Stephan 2010;
Stephan and Levin 2001). In recent research, Franzoni et al. (2014)
find that immigrant scientists out-perform indigenous researchers
in terms of impact factor. Using the 2003 National Survey of
College Graduates, Hunt (2011) found that immigrants who first
entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa out-
performed natives with similar education in terms of wages,
patenting, commercializing licensing patents, publishing and start-
ing firms. While our population is far smaller than that of these
previous researchers, the database contains the names of indi-
viduals and thus allows far more fine-grained tracking. Further,
because this is an IPO, it is possible to determine whether firms
with immigrant managers immigrant managers ör directors ¨have
superior financial outcomes.
7. Discussion
The first contribution of the database is apparently trivial, but, in
reality, quite important. Namely, we have produced a comprehen-
sive, curated list of all emerging growth firms that have listed on US
markets during the last two decades. Prior to building this database,
scholars have had to build their own databases, but have not shared
them making reproducibility difficult.27 This also addresses one of
26
In particular, see Fig. 4.2 in Kenney et al., 2014. Also, two UC Berkeley professors.
Chenming Calvin Hu and Ming C. Wu, were National Taiwan University graduates
that received their PhDs at UC Berkeley and then became professors.
27
The importance of sharing data was, perhaps, best illustrated in the recent case
where Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart shared their data with Thomas Herndon

26 NaƟonal Taiwan University
10 Electrical engineering
1 Computer Science
71 individuals
18 PhDs
4 UCB
3 Stanford
1 MIT
4 UCB EE&CS
1 Stanford EE&CS
19 NaƟonal Chiao Tung University
9 Electrical engineering
3 Computer Science
5 PhDs
1 UCB EE&CS
1 Harvard
30 PhDs
43 firms
16 semicon-related
7 pharmaceuƟcals
6 network equip.
18 firms
12 semicon-related
4 soŌware
1 pharma
1 network equip.
12 firms
4 pharma
3 internet
2 semicon-related
2 network equip.
Fig. 3. Taiwanese-educated TMT members academic paths with PhDs, key universities, and industries, 1996–2010.
the drawbacks to relying upon commercial databases, namely there
may be copyright issues prohibiting sharing.28 Normally, articles
are published without providing an appendix detailing the firms
included in the study. This stymies other researchers intent upon
reproducing or improving upon previous studies. Of course, the lack
of availability protects authors from critique.
While the IPO database itself offers ample opportunity for direct
research, its greatest promise is through linkage with yet other
databases to test new propositions in geography, entrepreneur-
ship and innovation studies, sociology, and finance. For example,
when linked to the patent database described by Li et al. (2014),
it could provide a comprehensive history of the IPO firm’s patent-
ing behavior and the patenting by the TMT members. The data on
the firm’s age, location, whether VC-financed or not, and SIC code
should simplify matching with similar firms that did not under-
take an IPO. This could be particularly useful for those interested in
the fate of roughly comparable VC-financed firms. Another possible
avenue for further research is linking the IPO database to univer-
sity technology licensing, SBIR grants, and even R&D expenditures
using the Starmetrics database described in Lane et al. (2015) in
this Issue.
IPOs, and the new industries catalyzed in the firms undertak-
ing them, are one of the most salient expressions of how the
U.S. innovation economy has grown during the last five decades.
Because IPOs are so prevalent for new rapidly growing firms, these
firms offer an opportunity for substantial insight into the impact
of entrepreneurship on the U.S. economy. For example, it is possi-
ble to measure the new employment and revenues created by these
firms (Kenney et al., 2012). Using the NETS database, it is possible to
explore geographical changes in firm employment. This is of inter-
est, because the concentration of the headquarters of these firms
in a few locations suggests a highly uneven geographical impact.
However, it is possible that the employment impact diffuses as
firms grow. For regional scientists, the patterns of this regional
expansion might be particularly interesting, as is the question of the
et al. (2014) who were then unable to reproduce the original results, thereby calling
into question their conclusions.
28
There are other important initiatives underway that should interest schol-
ars. For example, the Association for Corporate Growth http://growtheconomy.
org/iegc.lasso provides limited academic access to the PitchBook and NETS
databases. This can provide access to deep and quite expensive data.
ways this expansion differs by industry. Despite its policy impor-
tance, there has been little study of job growth by EGFs (Kenney
et al., 2012).
Another field of research that this database can facilitate is inter-
national comparisons o (Doidge et al., 2013; Loughran et al., 1994;
Lewellyn and Bao, 2014). This is especially timely as a number of
nations have established stock markets specifically for encouraging
investment exits for domestic and international technology firms.
Our database simplifies the establishment of comparison popula-
tions and furnishes a template for comparison.
8. Conclusion
This article describes a database available to the greater aca-
demic community, illustrates a few of its potential uses, and
provides a few descriptive examples of database applications.
The results from our examples suggest important avenues for
future research. For geographers, it can contribute to better under-
standings of the spatial aspects of successful entrepreneurship.
In particular, far more can be done concerning the location of
entrepreneurial support networks constituents including, not only
the law firms, local venture capitalists, independent directors, and
investment bankers, but also local educational institutions. For
those interested in diversity in entrepreneurship or corporate man-
agement team formation, the ethnicity and gender data should be
of use. The brief discussion of the Taiwanese managers suggests
that far more research can be done on ethnic networks and immi-
gration paths. Other researchers should be able to use this data, in
conjunction with data from other sources.
In the interest of brevity, this paper did not analyze the data on
the independent directors that are included in the database. The
same gender, founder, and educational data has been collected for
all the directors. One obvious use of the data is to examine whether
co-ethnicity ties exist between the TMT and BoD members and the
effect on IPO outcomes. The contribution by Bengtsson and Hsu
(2014) found that shared ethnicity increases “the likelihood that
a VC firm invests in a startup, strengthens the degree of the ven-
ture capital firm’s involvement, increases the size and scope of the
investment, and makes the financial contract more entrepreneur-
friendly,” but that the firm had inferior performance. With our data,
it is possible to test these relationships within the TMT and between

the TMT and the BoD, particularly because there is no need to infer
ethnicity linkages.29
There are some more general issues that should be raised here.
Replicability has been an important component of progress in the
natural sciences. The physical and biological sciences have already
moved a long distance toward the norms of an open science in
which data is provided to invite and ease replication and encour-
age cumulative advance. This is more difficult in the social sciences
due to privacy issues, the use of commercial databases that do
not permit data-sharing, and reluctance among researchers to pro-
vide their data to others (for a recent examination of this issue,
see Andreoli-Versbach and Mueller-Langer 2014). And yet, in the
current environment, data-hoarding is becoming increasingly inde-
fensible. To illustrate the depth of this problem, even relatively
trivial requirements such as the publication of firm names or the
organizations used in quantitative studies is uncommon. So it is
possible that one researcher studying the “biotechnology” industry
may use different firms than another researcher studying the same
industry. Effectively, the results are not comparable. This lack of
adherence to the norms of science must be slowing the progress of
social science. Lack of comparability and reproducibility may have
been justified or understandable in the days prior to standardized
software and the ability to costlessly send electronic files, but today
seem antiquated.
This article described an existing database, portions of which
have already been released for general use. Other portions are
being completed and will be released over the next two years.
Finally, a new extension is to use The Wayback Machine to recon-
struct management, firm description, and address changes for 500
venture capital-backed firms that during the last decade under-
took an IPO and 500 similar venture capital-backed firms that
did not. This openly available database will provide greater detail
on the evolution of venture capital-backed firms. The new era
of open-sourced software and increased information availability
offers scholars opportunities to strengthen the scientific basis of
the social sciences.
References
Alarcón, R., 1999. Recruitment processes among foreign-born engineers and
scientists in Silicon Valley. Am. Behav. Sci. 42, 1381–1389.
Amason, A.C., Shrader, R.C., Tompson, G.H., 2006. Newness and novelty: relating
top management team composition to new venture performance. J. Bus.
Venturing 21 (1), 125–148.
Andreoli-Versbach, P., Mueller-Langer, F., 2014. Open access to data: an ideal
professed but not practiced. Res. Policy 43 (9), 1621–1633.
Bashi, V.F., 2007. Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified
World. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
Beatty, R.P., Zajac, E.J., 1994. Managerial incentives, monitoring, and risk bearing: a
study of executive compensation, ownership, and board structure in initial
public offerings. Admin. Sci. Q. 39 (2), 313–335.
Beckman, C.M., Burton, M.D., 2008. Founding the future: path dependence in the
evolution of top management teams from founding to IPO. Org. Sci. 19 (1),
3–24.
Beckman, C.M., Burton, M.D., O’Reilly, C., 2007. Early teams: the impact of team
demography on VC financing and going public. J. Bus. Venturing 22 (2),
147–173.
Bellucci, A., Borisov, A., Zazzaro, A., 2010. Does gender matter in bank–firm
relationships? Evidence from small business lending. J. Bank. Finance 34 (12),
2968–2984.
Bengtsson, O., Hsu, D.H., 2014. Ethnic matching in the U. S. venture capital market.
J. Bus. Venturing.
Bigelow, L., Lundmark, L., Parks, J.M., Wuebker, R., 2012. Skirting the issues:
experimental evidence of gender bias in IPO prospectus evaluations. J. Manage.
40 (6), 1732–1759.
Boeker, W., Karichalil, R., 2002. Entrepreneurial transitions: factors influencing
founder departure. Acad. Manage. J. 45 (4f), 818–826.
29
Bengtsson and Hsu (2014) infer ethnicity on the basis of names. Their assump-
tion is that, for example, a Chinese–American or Jew would be more likely to invest
in a Chinese from China or Jew than to an individual from another race or religion.
Brush, C.G., Carter, N.M., Greene, P.G., Hart, M.M., Gatewood, E., 2002. The role of
social capital and gender in linking financial suppliers and entrepreneurial
firms: a framework for future research. Venture Capital: Int. J. Entrepreneur.
Finance 4 (4), 305–323.
Bruton, G.D., Filatotchev, I., Chahine, S., Wright, M., 2010. Governance, ownership
structure, and performance of IPO firms: the impact of different types of
private equity investors and institutional environments. Strateg. Manage. J. 31
(5), 491–509.
Buhr, H., Smith, J.O.-, 2010. Networks as institutional support: law firm and
venture capitalist relations and regional diversity in high-technology IPOs. Res.
Sociol. Work 21, 95–126.
Cannella, A.A., Park, J.H., Lee, H.U., 2008. Top management team functional
background diversity and firm performance: examining the roles of team
member colocation and environmental uncertainty. Acad. Manage. J. 51 (4),
768–784.
Certo, S.T., 2003. Influencing initial public offering investors with prestige:
signaling with board structures. Acad. Manage. Rev. 28 (3), 432–446.
Certo, S.T., Covin, J.G., Daily, C.M., Dalton, D.R., 2001. Wealth and the effects of
founder management among IPO–stage new ventures. Strateg. Manage. J. 7,
641–658.
Chen, H., Gompers, P., Kovner, A., Lerner, J., 2010. Buy local? The geography of
venture capital. J. Urban Econ. 67 (1), 90–102.
Chen, G., Hambrick, D.C., Pollock, T.G., 2008. Puttin’on the Ritz: pre-IPO enlistment
of prestigious affiliates as deadline-induced remediation. Acad. Manage. J. 51
(5), 954–975.
Cohen, B.D., Dean, T.J., 2005. Information asymmetry and investor valuation of
IPOs: top management team legitimacy as a capital market signal. Strateg.
Manage. J. 26 (7), 683–690.
Cohen, S.S., Fields, G., 2000. Social capital and capital gains: an examination of
social capital in Silicon Valley. In: Kenney, M. (Ed.), Understanding Silicon
Valley Stanford. Stanford University Press, pp. 190–217.
Cooper, A.C., Gimeno-Gascon, F.J., Woo, C.Y., 1994. Initial human and financial
capital as predictors of new venture performance. J. Bus. Venturing 9 (5),
371–395.
DesRoches, D., et al., 2007. Kauffman Firm Survey: Final Report. Mathematica
Research, Princeton.
Doidge, C., Karolyi, G.A., Stulz, R.M., 2013. The US left behind? Financial
globalization and the rise of IPOs outside the US. J. Financ. Econ. 110 (3),
546–573.
Dossani, R., 2002. Chinese and Indian Engineers and Their Networks in Silicon
Valley. Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford, CA.
Fenwick., West., (2014). Gender Diversity in Silicon Valley: A Comparison of Silicon
Valley Public Companies and Large Public Companies.
Filatotchev, I., Wright, M., Arberk, M., 2006. Venture capitalists, syndication and
governance in initial public offerings. Small Bus. Econ. 26 (4), 337–350.
Fischer, H.M., Pollock, T.G., 2004. Effects of social capital and power on surviving
transformational change: the case of initial public offerings. Acad. Manage. J.
47 (4), 463–481.
Fleming, L., Frenken, K., 2007. The evolution of inventor networks in the Silicon
Valley and Boston regions. Adv. Complex Syst. 10 (01), 53–71.
Franzoni, C., Scellato, G., Stephan, P., 2014. The mover’s advantage: the superior
performance of migrant scientists. Econ. Lett. 122 (1), 89–93.
Gao, X., Ritter, J.R., Zhu, Z., 2013. Where have all the IPOs gone? J. Financ. Quant.
Anal. 48 (6), 1663–1692.
Greene, P., Brush, C., Hart, M., Saparito, P., 2001. Patterns of venture capital funding:
Is gender a factor? Venture Capital: Int. J. Entrepreneur. Finance 3 (1), 63–83.
Gulati, R., Higgins, M.C., 2003. Which ties matter when? The contingent effects of
interorganizational partnerships on IPO success. Strateg. Manage. J. 24 (2),
127–144.
Hart, D.M., Acs, Z.J., 2011. High-tech immigrant entrepreneurship in the United
States. Econ. Dev. Q. 25 (2), 116–129.
Harvey, W.S., 2008. Strong or weak ties? British and Indian expatriate scientists
finding jobs in Boston. Global Networks 8 (4), 453–473.
Herndon, T., Ash, M., Pollin, R., 2014. Does high public debt consistently stifle
economic growth? A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff. Cambr. J. Econ. 38 (2),
257–279.
Higgins, M.C., Gulati, R., 2006. Stacking the deck: the effects of top management
backgrounds on investor decisions. Strateg. Manage. J. 27 (1), 1–25.
Hochberg, Y.V., Ljungqvist, A., Lu, Y., 2007. Whom you know matters: venture
capital networks and investment performance. J. Finance 62 (1), 251–301.
Huddleston, T. Jr., (2014). Obama criticizes Silicon Valley’s gender gap. Fortune
June 10, 2014. http://fortune.com/2014/06/10/obama-tumblr-gender-gap
Hunt, J., 2011. Which immigrants are most innovative and entrepreneurial?
Distinctions by entry visa. J. Labor Econ. 29 (3), 417–457.
Jain, B.A., Tabak, F., 2008. Factors influencing the choice between founder versus
non-founder CEOs for IPO firms. J. Bus. Venturing 23 (1), 21–45.
Kenney, M., 2011. How Venture capital became a component of the U.S.NSI. Ind.
Corp. Change 20 (6), 1677–1723.
Kenney, M., Mowery, D., Patton, D., 2014. Electrical engineering and computer
science at UC Berkeley and Silicon Valley: modes of regional engagement. In:
Kenney, M., Mowery, D. (Eds.), Public Universities and Regional Development:
Insights from the University of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Kenney, M., Patton, D., 2005. Entrepreneurial geographies: support networks in
three high-technology industries. Econ. Geogr. 81 (2), 201–228.

Kenney, M., Patton, D., Ritter, J., 2012. Post-IPO Employment and Revenue Growth
for U.S. IPOs, June 1996–2010. Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Kansas
City, Missouri http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/post ipo report.pdf
Kerr, W.R., (2008). The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors. Harvard Business
School Working Paper, No. 08–006, May 2007. (Permanent working paper
describing ethnic-name patenting data, revised December 2008.).
Kerr, W.R., 2010. Breakthrough inventions and migrating clusters of innovation. J.
Urban Econ. 67 (1), 46–60.
Kerr, W.R., 2013. US High-skilled Immigration, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship:
Empirical Approaches and Evidence (No. w19377). National Bureau of
Economic Research.
Kim, J.W., Higgins, M.C., 2007. Where do alliances come from? The effects of upper
echelons on alliance formation. Res. Policy 36 (4), 499–514.
Kristof, N.D., (2013). Twitter, Women and Power. New York Times (23. 10. 13.).
Lane, J., Owen-Smith, J., Rosen, R., Weinberg, B., 2015. New Linked Data on Science
Investments, the Scientific Workforce and the Economic and Scientific Results
of Science. Res. Policy.
Lewellyn, K.B., Bao, S.R., 2014. A cross-national investigation of IPO activity: the
role of formal institutions and national culture. Int. Bus. Rev. 23 (6), 1167–1178.
Li, G.C., Lai, R., D’Amour, A., Doolin, D.M., Sun, Y., Torvik, V.I., Fleming, L., 2014.
Disambiguation and co-authorship networks of the US patent inventor
database, 1975–2010. Res. Policy 43 (6), 941–955.
Liu, K., Li, J., Hesterly, W., Cannella Jr., T., 2012. Top management team tenure and
technological inventions at post-IPO biotechnology firms. J. Bus. Res. 65 (9),
1349–1356.
Loughran, Ritter, J., Rydqvist, K., 1994. Initial public offerings: international
insights. Pac.-Basin Finance J. 2, 165–199.
McPherson, M., -Lovin, L.S., Cook, J.M., 2001. Birds of a feather: homophily in social
networks. Annu. Rev. Sociol. 27, 415–444.
Miller, J.M., Feldman, M.P., 2014. The sorcerer’s postdoc apprentice: uncertain
funding and contingent highly skilled labour. Cambr. J. Reg. Econ. Soc. 7 (2),
289–305.
Mohan, N.J., Chen, C.R., 2004. Are IPOs priced differently based upon gender? J.
Behav. Finance 5 (1), 57–65.
Mowery, D.C., 1992. The US national innovation system: origins and prospects for
change. Res. Policy 21 (2), 125–144.
Nelson, T., 2003. The persistence of founder influence: management, ownership,
and performance effects at initial public offering. Strateg. Manage. J. 24 (8),
707–724.
Patton, D., Kenney, M., 2005. The spatial configuration of the entrepreneurial
support network for the semiconductor industry. R&D Manage. 35 (1), 1–16.
Pollock, T.G., Fund, B.R., Baker, T., 2009. Dance with the one that brought you?
Venture capital firms and the retention of founder–CEOs. Strateg. Entrepr. J. 3
(3), 199–217.
Pollock, T.G., Gulati, R., 2007. Standing out from the crowd: the
visibility-enhancing effects of IPO-related signals on alliance formation by
entrepreneurial firms. Strateg. Org. 5 (4), 339–372.
Portes, A., Guarnizo, L.E., Haller, W.J., 2002. Transnational entrepreneurs: an
alternative form of immigrant economic adaptation. Am. Sociol. Rev. 68,
278–298.
Ritter, J., Welch, I., 2002. A review of IPO activity, pricing and allocations. J. Finance
52, 1795–1828.
Robb, A.M., Watson, J., 2012. Gender differences in firm performance: evidence
from new ventures in the United States. J. Bus. Venturing 27 (5), 544–558.
Ruef, M., Aldrich, H.E., Carter, N.M., 2003. The structure of founding teams:
homophily, strong ties, and isolation among US entrepreneurs. Am. Sociol. Rev.
2, 195–222.
Sanders, J., Nee, V., Sernau, S., 2002. Asian immigrants’ reliance on social ties in a
multiethnic labor market. Social Forces 81 (1), 281–314.
Saxenian, A., 2006. The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy.
Harvard University Press.
Saxenian, R., 1994. Regional advantage: culture and competition in Silicon Valley
and Route, 128. Harvard University Press.
Saxenian, A., 2002. Silicon Valley’s new immigrant high-growth entrepreneurs.
Econ. Dev. Q. 16, 20–31.
Sorenson, O., Stuart, T.E., 2001. Syndication networks and the spatial distribution
of venture capital investments. Am. J. Sociol. 106 (6), 1546–1588.
Spender, J.C., 1989. Industry Recipes. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Stephan, P.E., 2010. The I’s have it: immigration and innovation, the perspective
from academe. In Innovation Policy and the Economy, 10. University of
Chicago Press, pp. 83–127.
Stephan, P.E., Levin, S.G., 2001. Exceptional contributions to US science by the
foreign-born and foreign-educated. Popul. Res. Policy Rev. 20 (1–2), 59–79.
Wadhwa, V., Saxenian, A., Rissing, B., Gereffi, G., 2007. America’s New Immigrant
Entrepreneurs. Kauffman Foundation Report.
Welbourne, T.M., Cycyota, C.S., Ferrante, C.J., 2007. Wall street reaction to women
in IPOs: an examination of gender diversity in top management teams. Group
Org. Manage. 32 (5), 524–547.
Zimmerman, M.A., 2008. The influence of top management team heterogeneity on
the capital raised through an initial public offering. Entrepr. Theory Pract. 32
(3), 391–414.

Gender ethnicity and entrepreneurship RP

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (14)

Similar to Gender ethnicity and entrepreneurship RP

Similar to Gender ethnicity and entrepreneurship RP (20)

Gender ethnicity and entrepreneurship RP