The importance of surrogate entrepreneurship for incubated Swedish technology ventures

•Fifteen years of Swedish incubation offers opportunity to investigate importance of surrogate entrepreneurs.•Technology ventures where incubator has appointed a surrogate entrepreneur perform significantly better.•It can be concluded that surrogate entrepreneurship and other interventions into entrepreneurial team formation is of importance and worthy of further research.

Universities and incubators that are more experienced in venture creation have been found to appoint surrogate entrepreneurs as one way to improve entrepreneurial team formation. However, it is not known how such intervention into the core of a venture affects performance. This article investigates the impact of surrogate entrepreneurs on technology ventures stemming from leading Swedish university incubators. From a total of 170 ventures incorporated 1995–2005, belonging to 16 incubators, 59 ventures (35%) have received incubator help to recruit a surrogate entrepreneur. Swedish surrogate ventures perform significantly better in terms of growth and revenue compared to non-surrogates. Significantly higher performance of surrogates is also found in the subgroup academic technology ventures as well as the largest technology subgroup of information and communication technology (ICT) ventures. These findings in combination with a case study of the most productive incubation environment are used to propose future research and policy regarding university incubators intervening into entrepreneurial team formation in different ways.