Startup entrepreneurs’ personality traits and resilience: unveiling the interplay of prior experience

Over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in interdisciplinary studies with the aim of understanding shades in management research fields. Building on Resource Based View (RBV), this study explores the intricate relationship between entrepreneurs’ personality traits, prior entrepreneurial experience, and entrepreneurs’ resilience within the context of Italian startups. Specifically, we investigate how the Big Five personality traits – namely extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience – influence the entrepreneur’s resilience by verifying whether and to what extent there is a moderation effect, due to the prior experience in entrepreneurship. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis using survey data from 141 Italian startup entrepreneurs, focusing on the fiscal year 2022. Factor scores derived from a Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) analysis with an Oblimin rotation were used. The empirical evidence of the OLS regressions with bootstrapping shows that prior experience acts as a moderator in the relationship between the first factor (i.e., emotional stability and conscientiousness) and resilience. While direct and indirect effects of the second factor (i.e., openness and extraversion) on resilience were not significant. At the level of individual items, personality revealed that conscientiousness and emotional stability predict resilience only if considered together. Our study holds theoretical and practical implications. Theoretical implications extend the scope of RBV to encompass individual-level traits and cognitive aspects, providing a deeper understanding of resilience antecedents. From the practical standpoint, our results emphasize the pivotal role of self-awareness and experiential learning for entrepreneurs and startup founders, suggesting that resilience might be cultivated through reflective practices and learning from past endeavours. For policymakers, our research highlights the need for initiatives that nurture entrepreneurs’ resilience and promote startups’ adaptation in changing environments.