1] Signaling – critical for employment, commercialization, and growth – consensus of studies votes AFF.

Our results demonstrate that IPRs in the form of trademarks relate to social startup development. As such, we find similarities to prior research on traditional startup development (e.g., Helmers and Rogers, 2010; Srinivasan et al., 2008). However, we find that there are particularities in trademarks for the development of hybrid outcomes of social startups.

First, our findings reveal that trademark registrations within the first three years of a social startup’s existence relate to their economic outcomes. Thus, we find that in addition to the receipt of grants and the experience of a social entrepreneur (Lall and Park, 2020; Rey-Martí et al., 2016), IPRs relate to the employment growth of social startups. Social startups seem to benefit from a signaling and appropriation value that has been identified by prior trademark research on traditional startups (e.g., Flikkema et al., 2014; Hsu et al., 2021; Malmberg, 2005). The signaling value of trademarks can help startups obtain access to external financial and nonfinancial support (e.g., Yang et al., 2020); also, trademarks enable them to have stronger commercialization of their products and services (Hsu et al., 2021). Furthermore, the signaling effect of trademarks can serve as a valuable sign for the growth ambitions of a social startup, which in the next step can lead to higher realized growth (e.g., Delmar and Wiklund, 2008). In turn, trademark registrations foster the economic development of social startups. However, our further analysis indicates that the number of registered trademarks is important to indicate top economic outcomes of social startups. This finding is in line with Block et al. (2014), who show that the number of trademarks affects startup valuations by venture capitalists.