Focus on Founders: Your Thesis in Entrepreneurship

• 💡 Background and Open Topics
• 🧠 Topics of interest
• 🦾Who We Are
• 🎓 Your Role and Profile
• 📝 How to Apply
• 📬 Contact

💡 Background and Open Topics

In Q2 2022 alone, over 700 startups were launched in Germany (Statista, 2022). Most of these startups were founded by teams rather than individuals. While team-based startups benefit from diverse experiences, they also face a higher risk of conflict, which can lead to team members leaving (Howarth, 2022).

To better understand what drives startup team success, we are conducting a large-scale longitudinal study on predicting startup outcomes. After recruiting cofounding teams, we use online surveys and an on-site study to analyze founders' behaviors, including video recordings and physiological measures such as EDA. This study is called the “The Gottman Initiative” — have a look at our webpage to find out more!

The project is inspired by the work of marriage researcher John Gottman, who demonstrated that emotional valence, physiological arousal, and conflict styles can predict marital failure. We aim to investigate whether these factors similarly affect the success or failure of startup teams. Additionally, we are exploring closely related topics that are currently highly relevant to entrepreneurship research, ensuring a broader understanding of the dynamics that shape startup success. The following master’s thesis topics are currently available:

• Topic 1: From Pitches to Clashes: The Role of Conflict Type in Founder Dyad Fundraising Success (Applications accepted, please reach out to Nathalie Schenk) This thesis explores how task versus relationship conflict in founder dyads shapes their ability to secure funding, uncovering when constructive disagreement drives investor confidence and when personal tension undermines it.
• Topic 2: The Link Between Personality Traits and Funding Success (Applications accepted, please reach out to Nathalie Schenk) This thesis examines how founders’ personality traits and their interplay in dyads influence funding success, revealing which trait constellations attract or deter investors.
• Topic 3: The Cascade of Co-Founder Breakups – The Role of Emotions in New Venture Dyads during Conflict (Applications accepted, please reach out to Christian Wimmer) Gottman found that the relation of positive and negative emotions during conflict in newlyweds predicts the success of their marriage. We are interested in whether these emotional states also affect the success of young businesses.
• Topic 4: The Role of Team Diversity in Predicting Start-Up Success (Applications accepted, please reach out to Nathalie Schenk) Diverse teams bring varied experiences and perspectives, but can also encounter unique challenges. Various deep-level vs. surface-level diversity factors can be investigated, such as age, gender, cultural background, or personality traits (e.g., Big 5), to understand their specific impact on team performance. When applying for this topic, please refine/specify your concrete research interest in the research proposal.
• Topic 5: Negative Leadership Behavior in Founders – Impact on Team Dynamics and Intervention Strategies (Applications accepted, please reach out to Nathalie Schenk) We aim to explore whether negative leadership behaviors can be identified in founder teams and examine their impact on founding team dynamics and new venture performance. The topic is to be refined to best align with your research interests. When applying for this topic, please refine/specify your concrete research interest in the research proposal.
• OR: Create your own topic! (Applications accepted, please reach out to Nathalie Schenk and Christian Wimmer) We have a data set of more than 200 start-ups you can use to design your own topic. Send us your proposal or your ideas where you want to make an impact. Consider the “Topics of interest”.

🧠 Topics of interest

• Entrepreneurship
• Deep level vs. surface level diversity
• Founding team formation
• Founder Personality (individual and composition)
• Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy)
• Intervention study design
• Emotional intelligence
• Conflict styles
• Team cohesion
• Marriage research
• Venture success
• Positive emotions
• Experimental design
• Start-up founder (e.g. demographics)
• Venture industry
• Venture capital

🦾Who We Are

The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organisations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership, and Teams.. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies, and organisations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.

🎓 Your Role and Profile

• Your role will be to work with our team at the chair of strategy and organization and other master's thesis students on
• Support of start-up recruitment and on-site data collection (dependent on topic)
• Analysis of questionnaires, video data, physiological measures (dependent on topic).
• Your profile
• Organizational skills and proactive communication.
• Reliable and self-driven working style.
• Since the experiment will be conducted in German, fluent German language skills are mandatory.
• Previous experience or interest in psychological topics and methods (such as content analyses, online questionnaires, experimental design…) is a plus.

📝 How to Apply

• Please send your complete application documents (CV, Transcript of Records, Research Proposal) in one pdf file to nathalie.schenk@tum.de or christian.wimmer@tum.de (as indicated with the topic)
• Research Proposal (1 page) must include
• Research question that aligns with the project (please refer to topic 1 to 5, see above)
• Max of 10 key references relating to this topic and concise summary of these key references
• Suggested hypotheses
• Statistical/analysis approach
• Start date: please indicate your preferred start date in your application

Please note: Please don’t use ChatGPT within your application. Please write briefly and precisely, as you will do in your thesis. It is just a proposal. You will get more time at the beginning of your thesis to further extend your methodology and finetune your topic.

📬 Contact

After reading the thesis description, you still have questions? Feel free to contact your potential thesis supervisors Nathalie Schenk (nathalie.schenk@tum.de) or Christian Wimmer (christian.wimmer@tum.de).