Abstract Crises have substantial effects for entrepreneurs and their ventures. This study explores the impact of COVID-19 on new ventures established during the first year of lockdown. Specifically, we study how ventures, founded at the height of the crisis, fare 4 years later in terms of their acquisition likelihood. We analyzed a sample of 169,596 ventures from CrunchBase, including a comparison group founded four years before COVID-19 and those launched during the first year of the pandemic, to test our hypotheses. Unexpectedly, our results indicate that new ventures established during the lockdown have a higher likelihood of acquisition compared to those founded four years before the lockdown, within a 4-year period following their inception. Notably, this result is driven by team-based ventures, which exhibit a significantly higher chance of acquisition when founded during the lockdown compared to those founded four years prior. In addition, our findings suggest that female entrepreneurs are not affected differently during a crisis, at least in terms of acquisition outcomes. These results emphasize the importance of team formation and collaboration in the entrepreneurial context, specifically in crisis time.
Soleimani et al. (Fri,) studied this question.