This paper explores determining factors of startups’ survival rate and subsequent factors that play a role in the growth of those start-ups into established firms. We use data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) of five cohorts of 3,910 nascent ventures across four countries; the United States, Australia, Sweden, and China. Our results indicate that (1) survival within the first year seems mainly determined by select procedural activities such as employee recruitment and initiation of financial projections, as well as the age of the team leader and cohort of the firm; (2) gender, education, and growth preference of the firms’ leader appear as the biggest predictors of performance after five years; and (3), a positive innovation-performance relationship through R&D prioritization, patenting, and product novelty may exist.