Company Success Among German Internet Start-ups: Social Media, Investors and Entrepreneurs' Personalities

There has been a lot of research on factors that help to explain why some start-ups become successful and their founders rich, and on the other hand why other start-ups fail terribly. Of course, starting up an enterprise is a complex activity dependent on institutional regulations, competitors, market developments and the simple recognition of the right opportunities at the right time. We know all of this, but still cannot accurately predict our chances of being successful as entrepreneur. There are some methods venture capitalists use, such as evaluating start-up teams and studying business plans. However, even after doing this, the chance of making a correct prediction is still lower than throwing a coin. Research has never been able to explain much of this complexity, but there are at least three factors that have repeatedly turned up when determining success and failure in the last few years. The first of these factors is a result of our tremendous technological development in the past few decades, but particularly in the most recent. In nearly all young enterprises, the utilization of social media and social networks has become a vital factor for survival and success. Many research results over the last few years have yielded the conclusion that social media are by far the most important platform for marketing products and services. To put this more scientifically, the diffusion of innovation is increasingly interlinked with social media. In addition, the recognition and creation of opportunities also increasingly requires social media platforms. However, this does not mean one should operate only online, investing all of his time and energy to communicating in social networks. The second factor concerns something that is quite obvious: money. Since the vast majority of start-ups do not have their own money or the ability to easily get a loan, obtaining financial resources is often a major problem. There are different ways to raise some money: One can ask fri