Abstract:
Interest in start-ups as a driver for socio-economic change is gaining momentum in Algeria, yet there is lack of attention to the social underpinnings of start-up founder’s motivations for undertaking such risky endeavors. This research addresses that with the key purpose of gathering and contributing information for the betterment of the nascent Algerian start-up environment, with a particular focus on the intersections of
self-employment and entrepreneurship and their implications on the society. With the use of interviews, this research analyzed the narratives of start-up founders with the purpose of dissecting start up founder’s motivations into either a search for self-employment or an entrepreneurial pursuit. The result is that desire to better one's financial and social position is a primary motivator for the formation of start-ups rather than mere
entrepreneurial pursuits. Nevertheless, our limited and inaccessible study population made the research complicated leading to a partially accurate conclusion. To improve the research, a larger and more diverse sample of start-up founders needs to be interviewed to provide a more comprehensive understanding of their motivations. The study revealed that Algeria's start-up economy has unquestionable development potential as
an attractive environment for start-ups. Problems also persist, such as building a more suitable economic environment to support start-up retention, solutions include learning from more advanced societies to shorten the learning curve
