An analysis of social ecology of startups in Iran

A UN report has identified three ten-year development waves of science, technology and innovation policies in Iran since the beginning of the 1990s. The first wave focused on the development of higher education, the second on the development of research and technology, and the third on the knowledge and innovation–based economy. Thus, the ground and emergence of startups became fertile since the early 90s. A review of internal and external studies and articles on the success and failure of startups indicates a lack of sociological vision and approach and therefore this issue is the main reason for our study. A qualitative method was applied in the study in order to understand the biological world and social attitudes of actors of this ecosystem. Our most important tool was in-depth interviews with people with their narrative and firsthand experiences, then, they were categorized, sorted, and conceptualized (taking into account Clark and Brown's six-step inductive method). The statistical population included six managers and startup owners, two of accelerator managers and six associates. After summarizing and categorizing the findings, we obtained 5 groups of variables (themes) named PESTE where P is for Politics, E for Economy, S for Socio-cultural, T for Technology and E is the sign of Education. Since social ecology of startups in Iran and the world at large are very new and fledgling, but with their application to the modern world, they are certainly very complex and multifaceted, hence, it will definitely encounter failure if one of its five pillars are not fit and accompany each other.