Publications
Publications
- 2023
- HBS Working Paper Series
Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Open Sourcing and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub
By: Annamaria Conti, Christian Peukert and Maria Roche
Abstract
We study the participation of nascent firms in open source communities and its implications for attracting funding. To do so, we link data on 160,065 U.S. startups from Crunchbase to their activities on the open source development platform GitHub. In a matched sample of firms with and without GitHub activities, difference-in-differences models reveal a substantial increase in the likelihood of being funded after firms engage with open source communities on GitHub. This relationship appears especially strong for firms working on novel technologies and negative for those facing high levels of competition, highlighting potential differences in opportunity costs of engagement. To provide insight regarding mechanisms, we classify startups’ technology use-cases on GitHub using machine learning and exploit data on product launches. Our results from these additional analyses support the notion that one important channel driving our results is the provision of access to external knowledge for technology improvement. Open source communities may thereby help startups improve their technologies to create a, at least, minimum viable product.
Keywords
Startups; Technology Strategy; GitHub; Machine Learning; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Information Technology; Strategy
Citation
Conti, Annamaria, Christian Peukert, and Maria Roche. "Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Open Sourcing and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-001, July 2021. (Revised August 2023.)