Abstract
The paper investigates the role of knowledge in the evolution of new financial services ventures in Sweden between 1990 and 2002. Drawing upon economic theories of human capital and spin-out entrepreneurship, we investigate whether knowledge from prior employment in the financial and technological industries facilitates the survival of new entrepreneurial firms. Based on a database tracking the evolution of 1,077 financial services ventures, we find that firms with more extensive knowledge from the financial services and high-tech sectors have higher chances of survival than firms with more narrow knowledge bases. Our findings offer contributions to the emerging literature on spin-out entrepreneurship and to research on entrepreneurship in services.