Team-level drivers of human capital accumulation by entrepreneurs

This paper focuses on human capital accumulation by entrepreneurs who are part of the entrepreneurial teams running new ventures. We investigate the influence of attributes of an entrepreneur’s teammates on the entrepreneur’s engagement in training to acquire new knowledge and skills. We develop a set of hypotheses on the impact of three characteristics of the entrepreneur’s teammates: teammates’ competencies and number, and the common ground between the entrepreneur and the teammates. We test these hypotheses using data on the participation of 244 entrepreneurs in a training program. Findings document that an entrepreneur is more likely to engage in training to accumulate human capital in a specific domain, the poorer the competencies of the teammates in the domain, the lower the number of teammates and in the presence of common ground with the teammates. These results contribute to the literature on human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship and provide implications for educators.