Founders' human capital and venture capital (VC) are two fundamental ingredients for new venture success in high‐tech sectors. We jointly investigate their influence on the growth performance of a large sample of Italian high‐tech start‐ups and find:
the importance of both components;
some characteristics of founders' human capital also exert an indirect rather than a direct effect on growth by attracting VC;
the 'coach' function performed by Italian venture capitalists on invested companies is important;
a substitution rather than a complementary relationship exists between these two drivers of firm growth.