Working Papers
Gendered Preferences
(Under Review) This study investigates how startups’ preferences for mentors, together with the availability of mentors who meet those preferences, contribute to gender differences in access to mentorship. Although prior research has established the benefits of mentorship, access may depend not only on who is available but also on whom entrepreneurs choose to approach. I examine how mentor preferences differ between women- and men-led startups and how these preferences shape subsequent mentor matches. Using data from a statewide venture competition, I observe the mentor pool available to each startup, startups’ mentor preferences, and the mentors with whom they were ultimately matched. Analyses on 441 startups and 633 mentors across six years of competition show that startups value mentor expertise, particularly industry and entrepreneurial experience, as well as mentor gender. Women-led startups show a stronger preference for women mentors and, in some comparisons, prefer women without focal expertise to men who possess it. Men-led startups, by contrast, place relatively greater weight on expertise. Since women are underrepresented across professions, women-led startups may face greater difficulties in matching with their preferred expert mentors. Matching analyses support this constraint: as preferences for same-gender expert mentors increase, women-led startups are less likely than men-led startups to obtain their preferred expert mentors. This pattern suggests that gender differences in access to mentorship may result from a mismatch between startups’ preferences and the composition of the mentor pool. Additional analyses show that same-gender preferences are weaker among women-led startups with prior entrepreneurial experience and become more constraining when women experts are scarce.
Expertise Configurations
(Manuscript Writing) How do entrepreneurial ventures configure external expertise relative to the experience already present in their teams? We examine mentor selection using dyadic data on entrepreneurial ventures and potential mentors. We find that ventures generally favor mentors whose functional expertise complements gaps in the entrepreneurial team rather than overlaps with existing experience. However, this tendency varies systematically across ventures. Technology-focused ventures exhibit stronger preferences for complementary expertise, particularly in technical and investor domains. In contrast, older ventures are more likely to select mentors whose expertise overlaps with their existing experience, suggesting that external experts may serve not only to fill capability gaps but also to validate and reinforce existing expertise. Together, these findings suggest that external expertise can serve different purposes across venture contexts: extending the venture’s capability base in some settings while reinforcing—and potentially validating—existing capabilities in others.
Work-in-progress
“Expertise Configurations” (Writing)
“Mentorship in Organizations" (Data Analysis)
“Women-Owned Certifications”
“Knowledge Diversity and Accelerator Design”