Are researchers more likely to succeed when they start a technology-based startup? The human capital theory defines the founder's accumulated experience, especially work experience, as an important precondition for startup survival. In particular, extant research have proved that industry-specific experience in founders gives a higher chance of surviving. However, in actual practice, many cases have failed spin-off within a particular industry even possessing their own technologies. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a founder’s former researcher experience on the survival rates of the technology-based startups and how founder’s entrepreneurial experience moderates the impact of researcher’s characteristics on startup survival. The author utilized the comprehensive survey dataset on 4,743 founders of nascent Korean technology-based startups. The results of the empirical analyses show that founders’ prior work experience on technical and research occupation give a negative impact on the survival rate of startups. On the other hand, startups whose founder had entrepreneurial experience have a greater probability of survival even if they were researchers. This study suggests that researchers who are familiar with technology should start their business with team members who can supplement their lack of managerial competence and market expertise.