In South Korea, venture businesses play a key role in commercializing new technology and revitalizing the economy. The Korean government implements various policies and supporting programs directly. Evaluating the possibility of future growth and selecting good venture business is very important for the effectiveness and efficiency of government programs supporting venture businesses.
There have been many studies aimed at finding the factors affecting the success of venture businesses, and entrepreneurs‟ characteristics are known as the major factor. In this study, the impact of entrepreneurs‟ characteristics on the performance of venture businesses is analyzed by using the survey data of 2,049 Korean venture businesses. Human capital and demographics, skill, and motivation of entrepreneurs are used as independent variables to measure the general and financial performance of venture businesses.
The results of regression analysis show that education of entrepreneurs positively affects the size, innovativeness, and net sales of venture businesses. In contrast, entrepreneur‟s skills, such as entrepreneurial experience and working experience show a negative impact in general. Networking activity, however, shows a positive impact on the size and innovativeness of venture businesses. R&D activity shows positive impact only on the innovativeness, but significantly negative impact on the size and net sales of venture businesses, and external funding has a positive impact on all of indicators of the performance of venture businesses.
These results suggest that we need to consider the several factors, such as education, networking, and external funding in the evaluation process, and promote networking and cooperation with others in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of programs
