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This study examines the perspective of German venture capitalists on the success factors of digital startups and follows an explorative three-dimensional research approach that integrates the micro perspective on the entrepreneurial personality, the macro perspective on the entrepreneurial context, and the meso perspective on the business model. Thus, the study operates in a very young field of entrepreneurship research.
One of the purposes of this research project is to work out the significance of particular characteristics at each research level for the economic success of a digital start-up from the perspective of German venture capitalists. Furthermore, the study sheds light on the view of this group of experts on the relevance of an entire group of characteristics.
To answer the central research questions, qualitative research methods and a mixed-methods approach are pursued, with quantitative and qualitative primary data being collected by means of theory-driven semi-structured expert interviews. As a result, a total of four articles have been produced: three articles that focus on presenting the results of qualitative research from only one of the three aforementioned research perspectives each, and a fourth article that combines methods from qualitative and quantitative research and derives an integrated, evidence-based working model of the economic success of digital startups from the perspective of German venture capital (VC) investors.