Many entrepreneurs face challenges in hiring employees, in part because of information asymmetries between start-ups and jobseekers. This paper argues that the prestigious organizational affiliations of founders act as signals that can convey two distinct unobservable attributes: (1) founder-related attributes and (2) venture-related attributes. We perform a series of randomized controlled experiments with respondents who are searching for jobs or will do so in the near future. Our results show that a founder’s affiliations with prestigious organizations make a start-up venture more attractive to jobseekers, and that they do so by signaling founder-related attributes rather than venture quality. Furthermore, we also find that the effects of prestigious founder affiliations are likely to be particularly strong when recruiting jobseekers straight out of universities.

许多企业家在招聘员工方面面临挑战，部分原因是初创企业和求职者之间的信息不对称。本文认为，创始人享有盛誉的组织隶属关系作为信号，可以传达两种不同的不可观察属性：（1）创始人相关属性和（2）风险相关属性。我们对正在寻找工作或将在不久的将来寻找工作的受访者进行了一系列随机对照实验。我们的研究结果表明，创始人与知名组织的从属关系使初创企业对求职者更具吸引力，而且他们通过表明创始人相关属性而不是风险质量来做到这一点。此外，