The Role of Data Analytics in Startup Companies: Exploring Challenges and Barriers

The advancement in technology is transforming societies into digital arenas and paves the way towards the achievement of digital transformation. With every transaction in the digital world leading to the generation of data, big data and their analytics have received major attention in various fields and different contexts, examining how they may benefit the different actors in the society. The present study aims to identify how startups that develop products with both software and hardware parts can generate value from data analytics and what challenges they face towards this direction. To this end, we performed a multiple-case study with early-stage startups and employed qualitative analysis on a dataset from 13 startups. Through semi-structured interviews, we examine how these companies use data analytics. The findings show that although the benefits from data analytics are clear, multiple barriers and challenges exist for the startups to be able to create value from them. The major ones are about their resources, including human skills, economical resources, as well as time management and privacy issues.