Examining entrepreneurial successes and failures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023)

Purpose When entrepreneurship scholars and policy makers turned their attention to entrepreneurial ventures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023), its full effects on entrepreneurial firms and systems presented radically challenging questions and unresolved puzzles. In this paper, the authors shed light on these questions and puzzles with a large-scale empirical examination of the pandemic's overall effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses with a view toward success and failure over time. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopt a broad exploratory approach and examine different perspectives to develop a deeper understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses especially regarding the success and failure of entrepreneurial ventures during the pandemic. Thus, the authors built a dataset with 10 survey waves from 2020 to 2021, with an average of 7,000 Brazilian entrepreneurial ventures (SMEs) in each wave of the survey. The authors used this data to examine their performance and survival. Findings The findings suggest that the increase of the COVID-19 virus contagion per se did not severely affect entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. However, the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic did weaken entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. Moreover, the findings suggest that entrepreneur education has an inverted U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial ventures performance. Indigenous, Brown and Black entrepreneurs experienced decreased entrepreneurial ventures survival compared to White entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurial ventures that adopted digital technologies and had access to loans increased their performance and survival during the COVID-19 pandemic, those who failed in these aspects experienced negative performance and survival effects. Thus, although the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted many entrepreneurial ventures and even forced some to close, others survived and even prospered during the environmental shock. Originality/value The paper sheds light on a little understood topic: entrepreneurial venture success and failure in the COVID-19 pandemic.