Start-ups with stronger early joiners show better trajectories in revenue, productivity and longevity. Using premature team member death in start-ups as a natural experiment, the authors show that losing an early joiner has persistent negative effects on start-up firm size and performance for at least a decade. The negative effect was weaker for later hires. Organisational capital lives in the early team.
Source: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28417/w28417.pdf
