Topic-based classification and identification of global trends for startup companies
Savin, Ivan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Chukavina, Kristina (Ural Federal University. Graduate School of Economics and Management)
Pushkarev, Andrey (Ural Federal University. Graduate School of Economics and Management)

Date:	2023
Abstract:	To foresee global economic trends, one needs to understand the present startup companies that soon may become new market leaders. In this paper, we explore textual descriptions of more than 250 thousand startups in the Crunchbase database. We analyze the 2009-2019 period by using topic modeling. We propose a novel classification of startup companies free from expert bias that contains 38 topics and quantifies the weight of each of these topics for all the startups. Taking the year of establishment and geographical location of the startups into account, we measure which topics were increasing or decreasing their share over time, and which of them were predominantly present in Europe, North America, or other regions. We find that the share of startups focused on data analytics, social platforms, and financial transfers, and time management has risen, while an opposite trend is observed for mobile gaming, online news, and online social networks as well as legal and professional services. We also identify strong regional differences in topic distribution, suggesting certain concentration of the startups. For example, sustainable agriculture is presented stronger in South America and Africa, while pharmaceutics, in North America and Europe. Furthermore, we explore which pairs of topics tend to co-occur more often together, quantify how multisectoral the startups are, and which startup classes attract more investments. Finally, we compare our classification to the one existing in the Crunchbase database, demonstrating how we improve it.
Note:	Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Crunchbase ; Machine learning ; Natural language processing ; Investments ; Entrepreneurship
Published in:	Small business economics, Vol.60 (February 2023) , p.659-689, ISSN 1573-0913

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-022-00609-6
PMID: 38624813

31 p, 3.5 MB

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Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles