How the sustainable international agreements influence the green start-ups’ success: The probability of being acquired

• Autor(a) principal: Profita, Ludovica Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/31044
• topic: Sustainable agreements; Green start-ups; Start-ups´ success; Acordos sustentáveis; Empresas verdes em fase de arranque; Sucesso das empresas em fase de arranque

In recent years, environmental sustainability has become an important issue and much attention has been focused on sustainable development, that was defined as a condition for development capable of "guaranteeing the satisfaction of the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to realize their own" (Brundtland Report, Our Common Future). This leads companies to evaluate their business models based on sustainability criteria. Awareness to adopt sustainable practices has increased in view of climate agreements, particularly the Paris Agreement, has marked a turning point in the global landscape. Acquisition of sustainable start-ups could be a proxy for start-up success. This thesis wants to investigate the role of sustainability within the sustainable start-up acquisition market by considering regulatory changes on international treaties on sustainability and considering a panel dataset of 3715 companies extracted from Crunchbase and founded between 2010-2019. The results suggest that sustainability does not positively or negatively influence the likelihood of a start-up acquisition. Consequently, it was decided to study in detail the reasons that led to the acquisition of sustainable start-ups within the sample under examination. Downstream of the study, the results show that sustainability is a secondary factor when companies decide to acquire. In fact, entrepreneurs are driven by other motivations related to profit maximization, particularly to improve their efficiency in the market using new technologies, expansion into more promising markets, or consolidation of their position in the market.