STARTUP PERFORMANCE INDICATORS IN A RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED ECONOMY: DESCRIPTIVE EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTANI TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS

Abstract

Technology startups in emerging economies operate under resource constraints that make conventional financial performance indicators insufficient for capturing actual venture progress. This study investigates the startup performance indicators in the technology startup sector in Pakistan based on survey data of 252 startups' founders, co-founders, chief executive officers, and senior managers. The study design was quantitative, cross-sectional descriptive. The seven items perceptual scale (Cronbach's α = .89) was adopted from the previous studies on entrepreneurship to measure the startup performance, covering financial, market, innovation, customer, and operational aspects. The mean score for the construct was 4.68 with a SD of 0.960, representing a moderate to positive performance of the sample. Targeted revenue growth and financial performance relative to expectations were the highest rated indicators in item-level analysis, with all seven items above the neutral midpoint. The results support the idea of evaluating performance in resource-poor start-up contexts in various dimensions and offer guidance on actionable steps for founders, incubators, accelerators, and policymakers in evaluating early-stage technology ventures.