The *be_founders* database
==========================

.. _introdata-label:

Data
----

The database has rich and detailed information about a large sample of
entrepreneurs who (co-)founded start-ups in Belgium. It contains information
on three main areas:

1. Individual characteristics (name, gender, city, etc.)

2. Education history:

  * Educational institution
  * Study program
  * Start/end date

3. Work experience:

  * Employer / Start-up (co-)founded
  * Job title
  * Start/end date of the position

.. _introsample-label:

Sample
------

We built the sample in three steps. First, we obtained the list of all Belgian
start-ups listed in Crunchbase, and retrieved their founders. Second, we collected
information on the work and education history of the founders from the business
directory LinkedIn. Third, we carefully parsed, cleaned and disambiguated the
name-, work- and education-related fields (see :numref:`methodology-label`\,
*Methodology*\) in order to reduce the incidence of spelling variations and
heterogeneity in entries referring to the same entity.

After extensive cleaning and disambiguation, the sample covers 774 entrepreneurs
which (co-)founded 1211 companies. As well, the dataset includes 6526 work
experience entries (employer/founded firm + job title) and 2295 education
entries (educational institution + study program).

Database Structure
------------------

We organized the database into separate tables. The current version (January
2022) consists of 41 tables, whose names have the following format:

<\N>_<xx>_<name>

where <\N> is a letter that indicates the table's *family*\, <xx> a number and
<name> is a unique string that reflects the table's content. There are four
*families* (with their respective leading letter in parentheses):

* Raw data (R)
* Founders' information (F)
* Educational background (E)
* Work history (W)
* Ready-to-use (U)
* Other tables (T)

As usual, the tables contain id's (one or more, local/foreign) that allow to link them to each
other. See :numref:`tables-label` (*Tables*\) for a complete list of the tables
and their contents.

All tables are located in the folder *'./04_tables'*\, in csv format.

.. note:: *be_founders* will soon be available as a self-contained SQLite
  database engine.


Links to external databases
---------------------------

To disambiguate each field we used libraries and dictionaries of *clean* names
from external databases (e.g., lists of company names, university names, job
titles). Besides helping with the harmonization step, such lists allowed us to
link our data to external data sources. :numref:`table1-label` below illustrates
the database's key fields and the external source we matched them to.

.. _table1-label:

.. table:: Field linking and mapping

  +-----------------+---------+---------+--------------------------------+-------------------+
  | Field           | Parsed/ | Disamb. | Linked to:                     | Mapped into       |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 | cleaned |         | *db name + (id)*               |                   |
  +=================+=========+=========+================================+===================+
  | Person name     | Yes     | Yes     | Crunchbase (cb_person_uuid),   |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         | LinkedIn (permalink)           |                   |
  +-----------------+---------+---------+--------------------------------+-------------------+
  | School/         | Yes     | Yes     | Orbis (bvd_id, duo_bvd_id,     |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         | guo_bvd_id), ETER (id),        |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  | university name |         |         | Carnegie classification        |                   |
  |                 |         |         | (UNITID),                      |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         | Webometrics (string name)      |                   |
  |                 |         |         | :sup:`1`                       |                   |
  +-----------------+---------+---------+--------------------------------+-------------------+
  | Study program   | Yes     | Yes     |                                | ISCED levels and  |
  |                 | :sup:`2`|         |                                |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         |                                | classification    |
  +-----------------+---------+---------+--------------------------------+-------------------+
  | Company name    | Yes     | Yes     | Crunchbase (org_uuid),         |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         | Orbis (bvd_id, duo_bvd_id,     |                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         | guo_bvd_id), Compustat (gvkey),|                   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         | CRSP (permno, permco, CUSIP)   |                   |
  +-----------------+---------+---------+--------------------------------+-------------------+
  | Job title       | Yes     | Yes     | O*NET (O*NET-SOC code)         | Functional        |
  |                 |         |         |                                | areas, :sup:`3`   |
  +                 +         +         +                                +                   +
  |                 |         |         |                                | job ranks :sup:`4`|
  +-----------------+---------+---------+--------------------------------+-------------------+

Notes:  :sup:`1` Webometrics data does not provide a unique identifier;
:sup:`2` we cleaned the strings, but parsed only the study type (e.g. bsc, msc, phd, etc.);
:sup:`3` e.g. business and marketing, R&D and engineering, etc.;
:sup:`4` e.g. top management, sub-management, non-management