Why Entrepreneurship Spreads Like a Virus (And How to Catch It)
The surprising science behind why some people become entrepreneurs—and others don't
TL;DR: What You'll Learn
Why entrepreneurship isn't about "special DNA" (but genes do matter)
How your coworkers, neighbors, and college friends control your entrepreneurial future
The exact numbers: How exposure to entrepreneurs changes your odds
A practical playbook to "infect" yourself with the entrepreneurial mindset
Every week I speak with founders from almost every time-zone. After thousands of these conversations, one lesson jumps out:
Entrepreneurship is contagious.
Picture an Ankara teenager whose parents work in government. Most of their friends aim for steady public-sector jobs. Unless that teen studies abroad or interns at a fast-moving company, the “startup bug” may never find them.
Now picture a kid in Palo Alto. Her neighbour is a Google engineer. Her maths teacher once sold a startup to Microsoft. Even with San Francisco’s recent ups and downs, she still breathes a daily air of possibility. If her parents are founders too, the odds of her launching something one day shoot up.
Same human potential. Two very different environments.
Last week I met:
Two former corporate managers who have just quit safe jobs to build their first startup.
Two university graduates who have been hacking side-projects since freshman year.
The contrast was night and day. What explains it?
Exposure. Peer effects. Contagion.
Research calls this entrepreneurial contagion: the more builders you see, the more likely you are to become one. Role models matter—sometimes more than money, education, or luck.
The DNA Myth That's Holding You Back
For years, we've told ourselves stories about "born entrepreneurs."
You know the narrative: Some people just have "it." The risk-taking gene. The visionary mindset. The special sauce that can't be taught.
Here's what decades of research actually shows:
Twin studies from Sweden tracked thousands of adopted children. The results? Genetics explains 35-60% of entrepreneurial behavior. That's significant—but it's not everything.
The other 40-65%? Pure environment.
Source: Meta-analysis by Nicolaou et al., published in Small Business Economics
Think of it this way: Genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.
And here's the kicker—environment is the part you can control.
Story #1: The Harvard Business School Discovery
In 2010, two researchers at Harvard Business School made a startling discovery.
Ramana Nanda and Jesper Sørensen wanted to understand why some employees become entrepreneurs while others stay in corporate jobs forever. So they tracked the career paths of 3.5 million Danish workers over 10 years.
What they found changed everything we knew about entrepreneurship.
It wasn't education. It wasn't salary. It wasn't even industry experience.
A key predictor? Whether your coworkers had been entrepreneurs.
Employees who worked alongside former entrepreneurs were on average 30-40% more likely to start their own companies (with the effect being strongest in smaller teams). In very small teams (under 10 people), the entrepreneurship rate almost doubled.
But here's the crazy part: The effect worked even when the original entrepreneur had already left the company.
Just being in the same office as someone who had started a business was enough to "infect" others with the entrepreneurial bug.
Source: Nanda & Sørensen, "Workplace Peers and Entrepreneurship," Management Science, 2010
Your Neighborhood Determines Your Future
The contagion doesn't stop at the office.
It spreads through entire communities.
Mariassunta Giannetti and Andrei Simonov studied every neighborhood in Sweden for over a decade. They tracked who started businesses and where they lived.
The results were remarkable:
Living in an entrepreneurial neighborhood increased your odds of starting a business by 25%. Even after controlling for income, education, and job opportunities.
But it gets more interesting.
When the local entrepreneurship rate rises by 10 percentage points (say, from 10% to 20% of residents being self-employed), others in the community increase their entrepreneurial intentions by 5 percentage points.
Translation: Entrepreneurship literally breeds more entrepreneurship by changing people's mindsets first.
Source: Giannetti & Simonov, "Social Interactions and Entrepreneurial Activity," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2009
The Tallinn Example
I see this every day in Estonia's startup ecosystem through my fund's work there. While I live in Istanbul, I spend significant time talking with Baltic and Nordic founders.
Twenty-five years ago, Estonia was still recovering from its post-communist transition, with most people working traditional government or industrial jobs.
Today? This tiny Baltic nation has produced Skype, Bolt, Wise, and 10 unicorns, including Pipedrive, Veriff, and others - more per capita than anywhere else in Europe.
What changed? A few early digital pioneers took risks. They hired people. Those people started their own companies. Which attracted international talent.
Which created a culture where building global tech companies from Tallinn felt normal, not impossible.
The contagion effect in action.
Story #2: The MIT Alumni Network
Aleksandra Kacperczyk, a professor at London Business School, wanted to understand peer influence at the highest levels. So she studied MIT alumni who went into finance.
Her focus: Hedge fund entrepreneurs.
Her discovery: MIT graduates were significantly more likely to start hedge funds when many of their university classmates had already done so. The effect was strongest among students who lived in the same dorm or graduated in the same year.
The takeaway? Even at elite levels, entrepreneurship spreads through social networks like a virus.
Source: Kacperczyk, "Social Influence and Entrepreneurship: The Effect of University Peers on Entrepreneurial Entry," Organization Science, 2013
The Cultural DNA You Inherit
The contagion goes deeper than your current network.
It travels through generations.
Swedish researchers studied thousands of adopted children to separate genetic influence from cultural influence. They tracked kids whose biological parents were entrepreneurs but who were raised by non-entrepreneurial adoptive parents.
The shocking result: Cultural transmission was almost as powerful as genetics.
Children of entrepreneurial parents were 60% more likely to start companies—even when raised by completely different families.
But here's what's really fascinating: The effect worked in reverse too.
A separate study tracked second-generation immigrants across Europe and America. Children whose parents came from entrepreneurially-minded countries (like the US or Germany) were more likely to start businesses than those whose parents came from more traditional cultures—even though all the kids grew up in the same place.
The implications are huge: Entrepreneurial culture gets passed down like genetic code. Through dinner table conversations. Through family stories. Through unconscious attitudes about risk and opportunity.
Sources: Lindquist et al., "Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?" Journal of Political Economy, 2015; Kleinhempel et al., "Cultural Roots of Entrepreneurship," Organization Science, 2022
The Complex Contagion Rules
Not all entrepreneurial exposure is created equal.
Recent research reveals the hidden rules of how entrepreneurship spreads:
Rule #1: Multiple Contacts Matter More Than One
You can't catch entrepreneurship from just one person. You need multiple entrepreneurial contacts to change your mindset.
Think of it like getting sick—one brief exposure usually isn't enough. But repeated exposure from multiple sources? That's when the "infection" takes hold.
Rule #2: Closeness Amplifies the Effect
The closer your relationship with entrepreneurs, the stronger the influence.
Ranking by influence strength (illustrative):
Roommates/Dorm-mates (highest influence)
Close colleagues
Same company but different teams
Same university but different majors (lowest influence)
Rule #3: Similarity Supercharges Contagion
You're most influenced by entrepreneurs who are similar to you—same age, same background, same gender.
Why? Because if someone "like you" can do it, it feels possible for you too.
Story #3: The Workplace Contagion Effect
Back to that Harvard study for a moment.
The researchers didn't just track correlations. They found natural experiments—situations where some employees were randomly exposed to entrepreneurs while others weren't.
Here's what they discovered:
Companies with entrepreneurial leaders saw significantly higher rates of employee departures to start new ventures. The effect was strongest when the entrepreneurial leaders had successful track records.
The pattern was consistent across industries: Exposure to entrepreneurial colleagues dramatically increased the likelihood that others would start their own companies.
The lesson: Entrepreneurship is literally contagious through workplace relationships.
The Dark Side: When Bad Habits Spread Too
The contagion effect isn't always positive.
Recent research shows that bad entrepreneurial practices can spread just as easily as good ones.
Cities copy Silicon Valley's startup accelerator model—even when it doesn't fit their local ecosystem. Entrepreneurs mimic fundraising strategies they've heard about, without understanding the context. Companies adopt "startup culture" as a performance, not a genuine commitment to innovation.
The lesson: Be careful who you're learning from. Not all entrepreneurial role models are worth copying.
Source: Ferrari, "Mimetic Isomorphism and Entrepreneurial Decision-Making," 2024
Your Personal Contagion Action Plan
Now that you understand how entrepreneurship spreads, here's how to deliberately "infect" yourself:
This Week: Map Your Current Network
Exercise: List the 10 people you spend the most time with professionally.
How many have started a business?
How many currently work at startups?
How many have left corporate jobs to pursue their own projects?
Red flag: If the answer is zero, you're in an entrepreneurship-resistant environment.
This Month: Inject Entrepreneurial Exposure
Level 1 (Low commitment):
Follow 5 entrepreneurs on LinkedIn who share their journey
Join startup-focused Slack communities or Discord servers
Attend one local startup event (even virtually)
Level 2 (Medium commitment):
Schedule coffee with 2 people who've started businesses
Join a co-working space with a startup-heavy membership
Consider a role at a high-growth company (even if you keep your current job)
Level 3 (High commitment):
Move closer to your city's startup district
Join an accelerator as a mentor or advisor
Start a side project with entrepreneurial friends
This Year: Create Entrepreneurial Community
The multiplier effect: Each entrepreneurial contact increases your odds of starting a business.
Your goal: Build a personal network where entrepreneurship feels normal, not exceptional.
How:
Host regular dinners for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs
Start a WhatsApp group for sharing opportunities and advice
Become the connector who introduces entrepreneurs to each other
Document your journey publicly (blog, LinkedIn, Twitter) to attract like-minded people
The Startup Hub Advantage
Living in any of the world's top 5 startup ecosystems gives you unique entrepreneurial contagion advantages. According to the 2025 StartupBlink Global Startup Ecosystem Index, here's what each offers:
1. San Francisco Bay
Contagion Type: Venture capital saturation
Advantage: Highest density of successful entrepreneurs per square mile
Culture: Risk-taking is normalized; failure is a learning experience
Network Effect: Every coffee shop conversation could lead to your next co-founder
2. New York
Contagion Type: Cross-industry innovation
Advantage: Finance meets tech meets media in one ecosystem
Culture: Hustle mentality combined with global market access
Network Effect: Wall Street capital with Silicon Valley mindset
3. London
Contagion Type: Global gateway entrepreneurship
Advantage: 30% growth rate, access to European and global markets
Culture: International talent hub with government support
Network Effect: Fintech innovation meets traditional business excellence
4. Singapore
Contagion Type: Gateway-hub entrepreneurship
Advantage: Business-friendly taxes, English-speaking talent pool, instant access to the whole Southeast-Asian market
Culture: “Build fast, scale regional” — efficiency, rule-of-law, and a strong government-grant mindset
Network Effect: Generous R&D incentives → VC influx → founders use Singapore as HQ to launch across SEA → more capital and talent keep circling back
5. Helsinki
Contagion Type: Games-and-deep-tech synergy
Advantage: World-class game studios (Rovio, Supercell) plus a rising climate-tech scene, all fed by top Nordic engineering talent
Culture: Low-ego, high-craftsmanship; founders focus on product quality and sustainability from day one
Network Effect: Slush conference → global investors meet local talent → successful exits recycle capital into new studios and climate startups → the flywheel spins faster each year
The Pattern: Every hub spreads its own strain of the startup “virus.” In the Bay Area you catch VC-fuelled audacity; in New York, a finance-tech hustle; in London, global-gateway deal-making; in Singapore, the build-fast-scale-SEA mindset; and in Helsinki, games-plus-deep-tech craftsmanship. Whichever city you choose, launching a company is the rule—not the exception.
The result? Maximum entrepreneurial contagion potential, tailored to your industry and ambitions.
Source: StartupBlink Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2025
The Bottom Line
Entrepreneurship isn't about having special DNA.
It's about deliberate exposure to the right people, in the right environments, over the right period of time.
Your genetics might load the gun, but your social environment pulls the trigger.
The good news? You can engineer that environment. You can choose your exposure. You can deliberately put yourself in situations where entrepreneurship feels normal, expected, even inevitable.
The question isn't whether you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
The question is: Are you willing to put yourself in an environment where entrepreneurship is contagious?
Sources & Further Reading
Key Research Papers:
Nanda & Sørensen (2010): "Workplace Peers and Entrepreneurship," Management Science
Giannetti & Simonov (2009): "Social Interactions and Entrepreneurial Activity," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy
Kacperczyk (2013): "Social Influence and Entrepreneurship," Organization Science
Lindquist et al. (2015): "Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?" Journal of Political Economy
Kleinhempel et al. (2022): "Cultural Roots of Entrepreneurship," Organization Science
Nikolaev & Wood (2018): "Cascading Ripples: Contagion Effects of Entrepreneurial Activity," Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
StartupBlink (2025): "Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2025," StartupBlink
Want to dive deeper? All papers are available through Google Scholar. Search by author names and publication years.
Found this useful? Share it with someone who needs to catch the entrepreneurship virus. And if you're already infected, drop me a line—I'd love to hear your contagion story.
Next week: I'm digging into the psychology of product-market fit. Why do some founders "feel" it immediately while others miss it entirely? The answer might surprise you.
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Great read as usual Burak
Great post Burak. This explains why Stanford produces so many founders. It's not the classes, it's the dinner conversations. Once you normalize the idea that "starting something" is just what people do on weekends, the mental barriers evaporate. Entrepreneurship becomes as casual as joining a gym.