The influence of entrepreneur characteristics on the success of pure dot.com firms

The growing popularity of the Internet, accompanied by falling access costs, is provoking an increase in the number of users and buyers on the net, and the appearance of new organisations that commercialise their products and services exclusively on the net. At present, this type of firms, known as dot.coms or cyber-traders, is playing an increasingly significant role on the internet, although the majority have not yet achieved much success. Despite this, there have been few studies focusing on the factors that affect the success of these companies. This current work attempts to determine if the characteristics of the entrepreneur may constitute a success’ factor for such firms, and if so, to what extent. With this in mind, 23 cases of Spanish dot.coms were analysed and a model to explain the influence of the entrepreneur characteristics on the success of pure dot.com firms was proposed.