The founding and early development of a firm are crucial events. Despite this fact, most research is aimed at problems existing in firms that are established and have passed the early development. Consequently, knowledge of the early development process in a business firm is limited, particularly where technology-based firms are concerned.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the early development processes of technology-based firms. The research questions are: What aspects are important in the early development of a technology-based firm? Are some of these aspects more difficult to develop than others and, if so, why? A case study approach is used. Three technology-based firms have over a period of five years been studied in detail, using interviews and sources such as minutes of board meetings, business and market plans and other documents.

From a review of the literature, eight essential aspects (business idea, product, market, organization, expertise, prime mover, customer relations and other corporate relations) of the early development have been chosen. The results show that the degree of difficulty to develop the aspects vary. A particularly difficult aspect is to define the market.