To Sell or to Run in Family: Entrepreneurial Behavior in High-Technology Firms in the USA

This study explores the question of entrepreneurial long-term strategy. The problem of the entrepreneur’s behavior has attracted a lot of attention among scientific society during recent years, when the entrepreneurial firms became to occupy leading positions in the American market. Our paper is focused on the investigation of the possible determinants of the entrepreneurial choice of the strategy towards his business in the long-term. Using the large sample of US high-technology firms we determine two groups of factors that can influence entrepreneurial decision, personal and company’s characteristics, and conclude that low risks induce entrepreneur to follow exit strategy whereas mostly founder’s personal characteristics, such as level of founder’s age, entrepreneurial experience and his ownership share are main reasons to the succession strategy.