Hybrid Entrepreneurship Study: Overlap Lasts Longer.
The key hybrid entrepreneurship study is the 2014 paper by Raffiee and Feng in the Academy of Management Journal. Among people who became full-time self-employed, the staged route had a hazard of exit thirty-three point three per cent lower. Also, the effect was stronger for those with prior experience.
A study with your two in the morning question.
Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng published their answer in 2014, under a title asking should i quit my day job. They used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, following people from 1994 to 2008. So they could see the month someone's employment status changed. Then over five thousand entrepreneurs were split into direct leapers and staged builders.
What the hybrid entrepreneurship study does not say.
However, the finding is narrower than most people repeat. It does not say hybrids beat employees, or that overlapping makes you rich. Instead, among those who ended up full-time self-employed, staged arrivals were substantially less likely to stop. In short, the part time founders survival rate story is about lasting, not about size.
Why prior experience points to learning.
The second finding shows what is really going on. Because the effect is stronger for people who had run something before, it cannot simply be caution. Instead, the overlap is where the learning happens. Therefore, someone who already knows how to learn from a business learns faster, and keeping a boat in the water helped.
Apply the hybrid entrepreneurship study to your own route.
Write down which route you were planning, staged or direct.
List one thing you could learn during the overlap before going full-time.
From the book.
I have lost count of the stages with somebody on them telling you to burn the boats. This is the largest study anybody has run on the question, and it says the people who kept a boat in the water lasted longer. Nobody is going to say that to you from a stage, because it doesn't sound like anything.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 9: Do not leap. overlap.
Questions about hybrid entrepreneurship study.
What did the hybrid entrepreneurship study by Raffiee and Feng find?
Staged entrants into full-time self-employment had a hazard of exit thirty-three point three per cent lower than direct entrants.
Does overlapping make a business bigger?
No, the study does not claim that. It only shows staged entrants were less likely to stop.
Why does prior experience matter here?
Because the effect was stronger for experienced founders, which suggests the overlap works through learning, not just caution.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 9, “Do not leap. overlap.”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 How Many Hours for a Side Business: The 96 Hour Trial.
- 02 Hybrid Entrepreneurship Study: Overlap Lasts Longer.
- 03 12 Week Business Experiment: One Number, One Stop.
- 04 Selection Bias in Startup Research: Read It Honestly.
- 05 Downsides of a Part Time Business: The Salary Shield.
- 06 Quit Job After Product Launch: Order Your Decisions.
- 07 Quit Job to Launch a Startup: Two Routes Compared.
- 08 No Time for a Side Hustle: Fixing a Trial That Slips.