The startups of 14 educational-software companies are investigated from three different perspectives: entrepreneurial, organizational, and ecological. The performance and stages of development of the new firms are viewed from each perspective. The entrepreneurial perspective concentrates on the characteristics and background of the founding individual. The organizational perspective looks at the planning and initial development processes of the firms. The ecological perspective uses the population of firms as a level of analysis and is concerned with the success of the industry as a whole. These three perspectives each contribute significantly to the designing of startups of new organizations.
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