The relationship value from incubators to female start-ups

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the knowledge transfer process comes from business incubators can improve the female startups’ competitive advantage in terms of the attractiveness of financial resources and subsequent acquisition by larger companies. This paper is a part of ongoing research on the gender studies field and it focuses on the study of relationship evolution between the woman startup (WSU) and its business incubator (BI), during three main company lifecycle stage: i) start-up or early stage, ii) equity- crowdfunding campaign and iii) the acquisition of WSU by a larger company. The qualitative methodology of a single case study was adopted. Particularly, thanks to a dynamism approach of the CAOS model is possible to observe, during the time, how the relationships’ evolution can contribute, in term of relational capital, to reach the declared goal. Assuming that variable (S) refers to the sustainability of the woman startup and identify the stages before, during, and after the equity crowdfunding campaign, it was needed to apply a triplication to the variable (S). Utilizing this framework, it is possible to recognize which types of relationships acquired by the female entrepreneur during the incubation phase, has reverberated in the following life-cycle phases until its acquisition by a larger company. Findings show that BI’s knowledge transfer process plays a central role in the development of woman start-up. Especially, it is possible to appreciate how knowledge transferred not regards only to the company dimension but it increases the personal sphere of entrepreneur that, thanks to the skills acquired, she will continue to retain a strategic management role also into the new company – after the M&A. This paper contributes to the literature in three different fields: i) gender studies; ii) knowledge transfer process and the relational capital; iii) the use of alternative ways of finance. Limitations concern the SMEs (startup) dimension. Analysis of data has been available only through direct interviews with the female entrepreneur. Future research perspectives will be focused on the acquisition of more data on the topic of woman startup and crowdfunding to reply the analysis by multiple case studies and try to understand which relational capital’s factors recurring for the sustainability of the start-up.