Startup board composition data (Ewens and Malenko, 2025)

This file contains the board composition data from Ewens and Malenko (2025) "Board Dynamics over the Startup Lifecycle." Paper available here.

Data description and sample creation

Building this database used a combination of Form D filings and VentureSource. Users of the data should read section 2 ("Data") and the internet appendix from the paper.

Sample code

Please see the code folder for Python and Stata code to recreate the first figures from the original paper.

Data structure

The file has the following fields":

• year: the year of the startup board data
• numOut: the number of independent directors (or outsiders)
• numExecs: the number of directors who are executives of the startup
• numVCs: the number of venture capital directors
• startupHadFinancing: a dummy variable equal to 1 if the startup raised capital in this year
• financingRoundNumber: the financing round number (using the sequence of financing years and other information)
• cik1,cik2,cik3,cik4: the "central identification key" or CIK that identifies the firm in the SEC EDGAR data. Note that some startups have more than one CIK

Citation

If you use this data, please cite:

Ewens, Michael, and Nadya Malenko. "Board dynamics over the startup life cycle." Journal of Finance, 2025.

  title={Board dynamics over the startup life cycle},
  author={Ewens, Michael and Malenko, Nadya},
  year={2025},
  journal={Journal of Finance}
}