Chuck Eesley

The institutional environment around founders matters more than we usually admit. I study how, and why.

Chuck Eesley. Professor of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University. Co-director for international entrepreneurship at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP).

Foundational concepts: institutional barriers to entry and growth, institutional inconsistency, platforms as private regulators of ventures.

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Impact

Forty years of Stanford alumni data. ~40,000 active companies. $2.7T in annual revenue. 5.4M jobs.

What a university's institutional environment contributes to entrepreneurship, separated from the selection of who walks in the door. With William F. Miller.

Field research and teaching across six continents, more than 200,000 students reached through STVP's global programs.

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Published in Nature · Strategic Management Journal · Organization Science
Featured in World Economic Forum · Bloomberg · Stanford Engineering, The Future of Everything
Currently Working on a trade-press book on the institutional engineering of innovation ecosystems. Selectively considering additional board, advisory, and consulting engagements at the intersection of AI, industrial policy, and entrepreneurship.

Selected writing

Peer-reviewed research and policy writing, hand-picked for readers new to the work rather than listed by date.

The Algorithmic Financing of Online Misinformation
NATURE

Published in Nature. How programmatic advertising routes money to misinformation sites, and what advertisers can do about it. With Wajeeha Ahmad, Ananya Sen, and Erik Brynjolfsson.

Stanford Alumni Economic-Impact Study
STUDY

With William F. Miller. Decades of data on how one university produces ventures whose annual revenues rival a top-ten economy.

Export Controls and the Global Reallocation of Venture Capital
WORKING PAPER

Working paper. U.S. controls meant to slow China's semiconductor sector coincided with Chinese chip startups raising roughly 12% more, and 6 percentage points more financing.

The Institutional Layer of an Innovation Economy
ESSAY

World Economic Forum, sole-author essay, June 2026. The decisive ingredient is the institutional layer between state spending and market freedom: tech-transfer offices, university-industry programs, accelerators, and founder-mentor networks.

CHIPS Act and Semiconductor Venture Capital
WORKING PAPER

Han and Eesley, working paper. How industrial-policy credibility, not just scale, shapes where private capital actually moves.
More writing on the Substack → Full publication list →
Press kit Board & advisory Speaking Stanford profile ↗ Full CV