Abstract: The relationship between entrepreneurs' human capital and business performance is one of the most important issues in the field of entrepreneurship research. As the most important component of entrepreneurs' human capital, the direction and strength of the relationship between entrepreneurs' prior experience and business performance have not yet reached a consistent conclusion. Therefore, based on 193 independent research samples at home and abroad, this paper finds that there is a positive and weak correlation between entrepreneurs' prior experience and business performance (r=0.109). To be specific, entrepreneurial experience has a significantly higher impact on performance than that of work experience and the impact of diverse experience on performance is higher than that of single experience. Furthermore, firm age, industry, environmental uncertainty, research time and the measure of performance all play a moderating role in the relationship between them. This study harmonizes the discussions on the efficiency of human capital in start-ups from the contingency perspective, and confirms the synergistic effect between different types of human capital, which is an effective extension of human capital theory. At the same time, the research conclusion of this paper, which is is more suitable for China's entrepreneurship situation, can help the construction of local entrepreneurship theory and provide a reliable reference for investors and entrepreneurs to make decisions.

Key words: entrepreneur, human capital, prior experience, business performance, Meta-analysis