Joining Fin and Tech: Examining the Cohesiveness and Nestedness of Fintech Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

The rapid growth of entrepreneurial ecosystems research has led to a number of gaps in the literature. One of the main critiques is that we have little understanding of the internal dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems. One result of this is that there is little agreement if entrepreneurial ecosystems represent a cohesive community including all high-growth entrepreneurs in a region or if they are nested sub-communities. This speaks to larger disagreements about what entrepreneurial ecosystems are and how they work. This paper addresses this research gap by using a novel methodology to classify the backgrounds of FinTech founders and top managers in the largest British FinTech ecosystems. The paper finds that the ecosystems in the largest ecosysems of the City of London and East London are very cohesive while the smaller ecosystems in Edinburgh and Leeds are more nested, with fewer connections between local finance and technology communities. The paper argues that ecosystem cohesiveness increases as the ecosystem develops.