Beyond Startup Counts: Using Valuation Outcomes to Assess Sector-Level Economic Promise in the Dutch Startup Ecosystem

Abstract

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are commonly assessed using activity-based indicators such as startup counts, accelerator participation, funding rounds, and policy support programmes. While these measures capture ecosystem activity, they do not necessarily reflect valuation-based economic promise. This study examines how observed startup valuations can provide an additional perspective on sector-level economic promise within an observed sample of the Dutch startup ecosystem. The analysis uses 63 startups across 21 sectors and incorporates three valuation sources: investor-negotiated valuations derived from completed investment transactions, professional valuations conducted for fundraising purposes, and revenue-based valuations derived from measurable monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or annual recurring revenue (ARR). The study is grounded in signalling theory and informed by the resource-based view. Using descriptive sector-level analysis, it examines value capture, valuation intensity, participation-value alignment, and cross-sector concentration. Valuation is highly concentrated. ICT/Technology/Software accounts for 67.5% of total observed valuation, while Agriculture & Food accounts for 13.4%. Together, these two sectors represent 19.0% of the startups but 80.9% o f observed valuation. The findings show that startup participation and valuation-based economic promise are not evenly aligned across sectors. The study contributes by extending the use of startup valuation from a firm-level financing metric to a sector-level indicator and provides a simple data-driven approach for comparing entrepreneurial activity with valuation-based outcomes. Valuation is treated as a market-based signal rather than realised economic performance, and the findings should be interpreted as exploratory rather than population-level estimates.