The be_founders database

This database contains rich, detailed information about a sample of Belgian start-up founders, including:

• Companies (co-)founded

• Education history

• Work experience

• Founders’ demographics and other background information

The data allow to approximate the networks of start-ups’ founding team members, and contains indicators for their (shared) professional and educational backgrounds. Additionally, such key fields as organization names and job titles have been disambiguated and matched to external databases of company data (Orbis, Compustat, CRSP), university data (ETER, Carnegie Classification) and job classification/skills (O*NET), paving the way to the construction of new and more complex indicators in the future.

Current version

v2.4 (March 2024)

Index

• User Documentation
  • 1. The be_founders database
    • 1.1. Data
    • 1.2. Sample
    • 1.3. Database Structure
    • 1.4. Links to external databases
  • 2. Quick start
    • 2.1. Parsed tables
      • 2.1.1. W01_exp_main_parsed
      • 2.1.2. E01_edu_main_parsed
    • 2.2. Flat tables
    • 2.3. Other tables
      • 2.3.1. U03_entrepreneur_dyads
    • 2.4. The be_founders dashboard
  • 3. Methodology
    • 3.1. Sample and primary data sources
    • 3.2. Construction of the dataset
      • 3.2.1. Cleaning raw strings
      • 3.2.2. String disambiguation
        • 3.2.2.1. Matching organization names
          • 3.2.2.1.1. Matching against business register datasets
          • 3.2.2.1.2. Matching against datasets of university names
        • 3.2.2.2. Matching job titles
      • 3.2.3. Creating categorical variables from job titles and study programs
        • 3.2.3.1. Job titles
        • 3.2.3.2. Study programs
      • 3.2.4. Other variables
        • 3.2.4.1. Age
  • 4. Description of tables
    • 4.1. Personal information
      • 4.1.1. F01_founders_info
    • 4.2. Education history
      • 4.2.1. E01_edu_main_parsed
      • 4.2.2. E02_edu_orgs_parsed_names
      • 4.2.3. E03_edu_programs
      • 4.2.4. E04_edu_programs_isced_levels
      • 4.2.5. E05_edu_programs_isced_fields
      • 4.2.6. E06_isced_fields_defs
    • 4.3. Work experience
      • 4.3.1. W01_exp_main_parsed
      • 4.3.2. W02_job_titles_raw_parsed
      • 4.3.3. W03_job_titles_parsed_onet
      • 4.3.4. W04_job_titles_indicators_onehot
      • 4.3.5. W05_job_titles_job_rank
      • 4.3.6. W06_job_titles_functional_areas
      • 4.3.7. W07_job_titles_other_indicators
      • 4.3.8. W08_exp_company_parsed_names
    • 4.4. Ready-to-use (analysis)
      • 4.4.1. U01_exp_flat
      • 4.4.2. U02_edu_flat
      • 4.4.3. U03_entrepreneur_dyads
    • 4.5. Raw tables
      • 4.5.1. R01_be_founders_source
      • 4.5.2. R02_edu_source
      • 4.5.3. R03_exp_source
    • 4.6. Other tables
      • 4.6.1. T01_org_concordance
      • 4.6.2. T02_orbis_company_data
      • 4.6.3. T03_orbis_bvd_sectors
      • 4.6.4. T04_edu_concordance_ALL
      • 4.6.5. T05_international_orgs
      • 4.6.6. T06_compustat
      • 4.6.7. T07_crunchbase_2013
      • 4.6.8. T08_crunchbase_2015
      • 4.6.9. T09_crsp
      • 4.6.10. T11_eter
      • 4.6.11. T12_carnegie
      • 4.6.12. T13_universities_bxl_wallonie
      • 4.6.13. T14_schools
      • 4.6.14. T15_webometrics
      • 4.6.15. T16_cb_companies
      • 4.6.16. T17_cb_industries
      • 4.6.17. T18_cb_names
      • 4.6.18. T19_entrepreneur_dyads_industries
      • 4.6.19. T20_entrepreneur_dyads_sectors
      • 4.6.20. T21_cofounders_count
      • 4.6.21. T22_employee_turnover
      • 4.6.22. T23_orbis_financial_data
      • 4.6.23. T24_cb_focal_startups_landing
      • 4.6.24. T25_focal_startups_cbuuid_orgid_bvd
      • 4.6.25. T26_kbo_status
      • 4.6.26. T27_cb_acquisition
      • 4.6.27. T28_funding_round
  • 5. Using the SQLite db
  • 6. Links
• Developer Documentation
  • 1. The Python files & code
    • 1.1. The .py files
    • 1.2. Updating the database
  • 2. The documentation files
• Changelog

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page