Do initial financial conditions determine the exit routes of start-up firms?

This study investigates the impact of initial financial conditions on the post-entry performance of firms in a sample of 16,185 Japanese joint-stock companies. We examine whether initial financial conditions, including entry regulations, affect the duration of survival among Japanese start-up firms, distinguishing between failure and merger. We provide evidence that start-up firms that rely more on equity than on debt financing are less likely to fail within a shorter period, although we find little evidence that initial equity size has a significant effect on the time to failure of start-up firms in our sample. Moreover, we find the negative effect of equity financing on the time to failure to be greater for start-up firms founded following the abolition of regulations for minimum capital requirements. Furthermore, the results reveal that start-up firms with larger initial equity capital are more likely to exit through merger, indicating that the effects of initial financial conditions depend on the type of exit route.