What is success? – Concepts and perspectives in the Hungarian startup context

Abstract

Despite the prominent academic interest in the existing startup literature, neither the founders’ perspectives on success nor its media representation have received adequate investigation. This paper presents an exploratory comparative analysis of startup success in Hungary from the founders’ perspectives and its media representation, based on a media content analysis of Forbes articles (n=128) and qualitative interviews with startup founders (n=22). The results showed that strong state dominance and less careful project selection resulted in divergent narratives in the media and in the interviews with founders. In Forbes, capital attraction was found to be the key indicator of success, with real performance validated mainly by international investors, which also reinforced the construction of startup culture as a global form. In contrast, the perception of capital attraction was more ambiguous among the founders, for whom real performance was often justified by the market rather than the investor.