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We contribute to the literature on corporate spin‐offs and university spin‐offs by exploring how different characteristics in the technological knowledge base at start‐up influence spin‐off performance. We investigate how the technological knowledge characteristics endowed at start‐up predict growth, taking into account whether the knowledge/technology is transferred from a corporation or university. We use a novel, hand‐collected dataset involving 48 corporate and 73 university spin‐offs, comprising the population of spin‐offs in Flanders during 1991–2002. We find corporate spin‐offs grow most if they start with a specific narrow‐focused technology sufficiently distinct from the technical knowledge base of the parent company and which is tacit. University spin‐offs benefit from a broad technology which is transferred to the spin‐off. Novelty of the technical knowledge does not play a role in corporate spin‐offs, but …