This thesis attempts to answer the question why there are so few female founders of startup companies in the Czech Republic. In order to identify the main roots of gender inequality in this field and obtain a detailed understanding of the gender culture of Czech startups, biographic-narrative interviews were conducted with women in managing positions as well as female founders of Czech startups. Through in-depth analysis of these women's narratives, key areas were identified which contribute to the reproduction of gender segregation in this field. The research found that the inequality is mainly caused by gender stereotypes towards women in the field of technology, which even the interviewed women reproduce through identification with a specific type of masculinity. In an attempt to fulfill the gendered expectations from an ideal startup founder or manager women often find themselves in conflict with the traditional role of women in the Czech Republic. The second group of women on the other hand emphasize the importance of femininity and indentify themselves against this type of masculinity. The analysis also showed the importance of the gender inequalities in the technical field of education, that are also reflected in the startups. The author recommends a further research into the following areas...

This paper describes the way start-ups use Project Management, what their needs in this field are, and what tools they use to support it. In the first part of this paper, a comprehensive literature review is performed, divided into three main parts. First, Project Management in general is studied; second its benefits to SMEs are pinpointed; and finally its application to startups are reviewed. The second part of this paper is based on three case studies of start-ups in the Stockholm-region. Five representatives of these start-ups were interviewed, and the results of these face-to-face conversations are first exposed and then discussed by the author. In the end, this paper shows the traditional phase-based approach to Project Management does not suit start-ups. Instead, a more agile and iterative method is put forward, such as SCRUM. It is argued that such strategy should be kept by start-ups when growing and tapping other markets outside Sweden, although it is recognized that Project Management should become more formal than the general “on the go” approach witnessed in the three start-ups.

Background: Start-ups foster economic development, create new jobs and generate economic value. However, most start-ups fail during the development phase. Generally, after five years 80% of the start-ups fail and need to shut down their business. A challenging task that start-ups need to overcome is the labour shortage within the industry. With the existing literature focusing on how business generally can attract employees, a gap in the literature was identified on how start-ups can attract employees.   Purpose: The study’s purpose is to explore how start-ups can work to attract employees during the development phase of the business. Moreover, the aim is to explore why employees are attracted to the start-up industry and how managers work with recruitment.  Method: Semi-structured interviews with nine relevant participants who operate in the start-up environment as managers or employees were performed. The interviews were conducted by using a qualitative method with an inductive approach and data were analysed by using a systematic thematic analysis, which further led to the creation of a conceptual model.   Conclusion: The findings suggest start-ups to implement employer branding to increase the brand’s visibility. The beneficial opportunities associated with start-ups is a factor that would be recommended to prioritise to increase the attraction to the industry. This means that there is space for improvement regarding start-ups attraction. In addition to this conclusion, findings also suggest start-ups to implement a recruitment system.

Our society is increasingly entangled with, and reliant on software. Previously, software has mainly been operated on-premises, i.e., installed and ran on a physical computer, manually supported, and maintained by individuals at the location where the software is running. Today, software is often delivered via the cloud using a pay-as-you-go subscription service, hosted, and continuously supported by the vendor, i.e., the organization providing the solution. A collective name for this type of solution is “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS). SaaS is a popular delivery model amongst software start-ups, who are known to be innovative and create valuable new solutions that benefit society. Hence, it can be valuable to help SaaS start-ups understand how most effectively navigate and reach their first customers. This thesis does this by investigating what buyers find important when buying SaaS from a start-up vendor. Technology and innovation adoption has been extensively studied. Theories such as the “TOE-framework” and “Diffusion of Innovation” attempt to explain how the adoption of new solutions is determined and what factors influence it. Moreover, multiple studies have also investigated what affects the decision to buy SaaS. Finally, studies have examined what buyers find important when buying from a start-up. However, no studies have explored what buyers consider when buying SaaS from a start-up vendor. This thesis aims to fulfill the research gap presented above and to answer the following research questions:   What are the determining factors for adoption of Software-as-a-Service delivered by a start-up vendor? How do these determinants affect adoption? To answer the research questions, the study utilizes a deductive approach with elements of induction. Qualitative data is collected in 8 semi-structured interviews, all with a focus on buying organization's SaaS adoption decision. The interview structure is based on the theoretical framework which consists of four major categories that can affect adoption: “Technology”, “Organization”, and “Environment”, of the TOE-framework, and “Vendor Relationship” which is added by the authors of this thesis based on prior studies that suggested this as an important aspect in for the studied context. Within each major category, determinants of adoption, i.e., factors that influence the decision to adopt, are derived from theories specific to SaaS and start-up adoption. The findings confirm all four of the overarching categories of the theoretical framework as important in the decision to adopt SaaS from a start-up vendor. The confirmation of the vendor relationship category can be considered a key finding of the thesis since it is not present in the original TOE-framework or any of the studies on SaaS and start-up adoption. On a more granular level, the thesis highlights the observed adoption determinants under each of the categories and describes how they relate to each other and to existing theory. By answering the research questions, the thesis provides useful insights that can help SaaS start-ups better understand what factors potential buyers consider in their adoption decision. As a result, start-ups can better align their strategy with the wants and needs of buyers and increase the probability of success. Finally, the thesis contributes to theory by expanding knowledge related to the factors determining the adoption of SaaS, when it is delivered by a start-up vendor.

In the past, steam turbines were mostly used for base load operation. Nowadays, with the increased development of variable renewable technologies, these same steam turbines are withstanding higher cyclic operational regimes with more frequent start-ups and fast changing loads. As such, improving the operational flexibility of installed and future designed steam turbines is a key aspect to be considered by equipment manufacturers. Steam turbine start-up is a phase of particular interest since is considered to be the most intricate of transient operations. During this phase, the machine can potentially be subjected to excessive thermal stresses and axial rubbing due to differential thermal expansion. These two thermal phenomena either consume component lifetime or can lead to machine failure if not carefully controlled. As such, there is a balance to be considered between increasing turbine start-up speed while ensuring the safe operation and life preservation of these machines. In order to improve the transient operation of steam turbines, it becomes important to examine their thermal behavior during start-up operation. To do that, it is important to have tools able to predict the thermal response of the machine. In this thesis work the impact of different aspects and boundary conditions on the results of ST3M, a KTH in-house tool, were investigated with the aim of understanding how large was their impact on the way to capture the thermal behavior of the turbine in terms of metal temperature and differential expansion. A small industrial high pressure turbine was validated against measured data and implemented on a sensitivity study; this analysis showed that the geometrical approximation introduce errors in the results, that the use of empirical Nusselt correlations give similar results to the validated model and that the cavity assumptions have a large impact on the trend of the differential expansion. Lastly, a strategy to validate any other similar turbine to the one of the study case was proposed in order to give a guide to future works in how to validate a model and what are the most influent parameters to take care of.

Inducer performance is investigated for a variety of inducer geometries operating at multiple flow conditions using computational fluid dynamics. Inducers are used as a first stage in turbopumps to minimize cavitation and allow the pump to operate at lower inlet head conditions. The formation of inlet flow recirculation or backflow in the inducer occurs at low flow conditions and can lead to instabilities and cavitation-induced head breakdown. Backflow formation is often attributed to tip leakage flow. The performance of an inducer with and without tip clearance is examined. Removing the tip clearance eliminates tip leakage flow; however, backflow is still observed. Analysis suggests that blade inlet diffusion, not tip leakage flow, is the fundamental mechanism leading to the formation of backflow. Performance improvements in turbopump systems pumping cold water have been obtained through implementation of a recirculation channel called a stability control device (SCD). However, many inducers actually pump cryogenic fluids, such as liquid hydrogen. To determine the real world effects of SCD implementation, inducer performance at on and off design flow coefficients with and without an SCD were modeled with liquid hydrogen as the working fluid. Relevant thermodynamic effects present in liquid hydrogen at cryogenic temperatures are considered. The results reveal that the SCD yields marginal changes in the head coefficient. However, a stabilizing effect occurs at all considered flow coefficients, where a reduction in backflow occurs over much of the pump operational range. This occurs due to the SCD maintaining consistent, low incidence angles at the inducer leading edge.The final consideration of this work is the acceleration of an inducer from rest to the operating rotational rate. Rapid acceleration of rocket engine turbopumps during start-up imparts significant transient effects to the resulting flow field, causing pump performance to vary widely when compared to quasi-steady operation. A method to simulate turbopump start-up using CFD is developed and presented. The defined outlet pressure is modified based on the difference between simulation inlet pressure and target inlet pressure of a previous simulation. This process is repeated until simulation inlet pressure is essentially constant during start-up. Using this novel simulation method, the performance of a centrifugal turbopump during start-up is simulated. Analysis suggests this simulation method provides a reasonable prediction of cavitation formation and inducer performance.

The growing shares of renewable energy sources in the market and solar thermal power applications have set higher requirements on steam turbine operation.These requirements are related to flexibility during transients. A key aspect sought of such flexibility is the capability for fast starts. Due to the varying temperature gradients during start-up, the speed at which the turbine can start is constrained by thermal stresses and differential expansion. These phenomena either consume component lifetime or may result in machine failure if not carefully controlled. In order to accomplish faster starts while ensuring that lifing requirements are preserved, it is important to analyze the thermal behavior of the machine. For this, a transient thermal model was developed with a focus on adaptability to different turbine sizes and geometries. The model allows for simple and fast prediction of thermo-mechanical properties within the turbine metal, more importantly, of the temperature distribution and the associated thermal expansion. The next step of this work was to validate the assumptions and simplifications of the model. This was done through the study and comparison of two turbines against measured operational data from their respective power plants. Furthermore,validation studies also included comparisons concerning the geometric detail level of the model. Overall, comparison results showed a large degree of agreement with respect to the measured data and between the geometric detail levels. The validated model was then implemented in studies related to reducing start-up times and peak differential expansion. For this, the potential effects of turbine temperature maintaining modifications were investigated and quantified.The modifications studied included: increasing gland steam pressure, increasing back pressure and increasing barring speed. Results yielded significant improvements starting from 9.5% in the start-up times and 7% in the differential expansion. / <p>QC 20141128</p>

This MSc thesis was a project performed in a start-up that develops sustainable devices to exploit renewable energies, specifically in the field of energy harvesting in small scale. The objective of the thesis is to demonstrate the importance of developing the technical side of a project together with the development of the market. The idea is to enhance the success possibilities and work to get to the market as fast as possible with a minimum sellable product using the resources as efficiently as possible. The market analysis was the first step to be performed to understand what the start-up was getting into, at the beginning it was clear that the generator should be targeted to power remote applications that require small amounts of energy and a market that is not suitable for present technologies such as solar PV or micro wind turbines. After this a series of potential markets were identified in order to limit the research and three opportunities were selected. The buoy market was chosen, it has several sub-markets and the AtoN buoys, Fishing buoys and Meteorological buoys were considered the most important and suitable ones. Once the market was defined, the needs of the clients and users were discovered through research in the form of interviews and bibliographical research. Later on an experimental rig was used to test several models of the prototype under different parameters to select one that was close to what was demanded and that can actually be built. This approach was useful to dedicate resources efficiently, specially time and money. The last part of the thesis was to propose a sustainable business model describing a go-to-market strategy that considered both the limitations of the technology and the testing performed in the scope of this project and the expectations of the market for the proposed product. The methodology was a mixed use of business tools learned in the courses and the experiences of the people who were close to the start-up. There is a final reflection at the conclusions that describe the day-to-day of the start-up and the experiences learned as well as the recommendations for future work.

The main topic of this diploma thesis is the capital allocation. I focus on crowdfunding and study how the development of crowdfunding during the last years influenced options and effectiveness of the capital allocation. I compare crowdfunding with other distributional models. Under the term of "distributional models", I understand funding models, namely bilateral model, banks, stock markets and venture capital. I choose start-ups or arising projects as a medium of exploration. The hypothesis of this thesis is as follows: "Crowdfunding is better model for funding arising projects than venture capital, banks, stock market or bilateral model." To answer the main hypothesis, I analyze two supporting hypothesis. The first hypothesis studies the principle of crowdfunding. It says, that crowdfunding is able to recognize funding-worthy projects better than other models. I want to know, what makes crowdfunding an innovative concept, I study, how the new media manifest themself in the concept of crowdfunding. I analyze, how crowdfunding eliminates individual errors by using the "crowd". And above all, I study how each model addresses the role of an intermediary in the relation between surplus and scarce subjects. The second hypothesis observes, whether crowdfunding provides more money to the arising projects than...

The practical execution of an entrepreneurial process for technology-driven ventures in emerging markets can be likened to a maze - a dynamically complex process with many navigational contingencies. While the overall navigational path may appear straightforward conceptually, the actual execution path inherently becomes fraught with sub-optimal turns and apparent dead-end trails as an entrepreneur dynamically confronts many challenges. The navigational path for effectively sequencing events can be confounding, especially since event outcomes are highly contingent upon timing as well as execution of the appropriate events; seemingly 'right' actions can be applied at the 'wrong' time in the process with the corresponding result being an undesired outcome. Combining practical experience with academic research, this paper addresses the entrepreneurial process maze by presenting the authors' phased-structure process model for proactively sequencing effective actions in entrepreneurial ventures. Fundamental to this process model is a 'tactician' phase wherein a seven-step prescription is introduced to help entrepreneurs navigate the maze and dynamically sequence the 'right actions' at the 'right time' for commercialising innovations. Both the phased-structure process model and its seven-step prescription for the tactician provide practical guidance for technology-driven entrepreneurial ventures.