New Publication in Small Business Economics
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article entitled “Does acqui-hiring pay off? An empirical investigation of founder retention”, authored by Nikolaus Seitz (Bauhaus University Weimar) and Erik E. Lehmann (University of Augsburg), published in Small Business Economics.
The study examines acqui-hiring as a strategic response to the global competition for entrepreneurial talent. While firms increasingly acquire startups mainly for their human capital, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this practice remains limited. Drawing on a dataset of 454 acqui-hired founders from 241 transactions by Google and Meta, the article highlights the challenges of retaining individual entrepreneurs compared to entire co-founder teams, and emphasizes the importance of preserving co-founder hierarchy. The study contributes to strategic entrepreneurship research by shedding light on organizational design decisions in intrapreneurship and startup–corporate collaborations, particularly regarding structural integration for knowledge and innovation transfer.
The full article is available at the following link:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-025-01107-1