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In this paper we use the lens provided by the resource-based perspective and agency theories to analyse benefits and costs arising from separation between ownership and control in high-tech start-ups. We argue that when these firms obtain external financing, the associated separation between ownership and control generates agency costs. Whether these costs exceed the benefits of external financing depends on the amount and quality of the resources provided by external investors. In particular, we distinguish external investors in outsiders and institutional VC investors. Moreover, we verify that the negative effect of agency costs disappears when we consider financing from insiders. We conduct a cross-section analysis on a sample of 202 Italian NTBFs. To measure firm performance we resort to relative TFP measured by two different methods: Blundell-Bond and Olley-Pakes estimators. We resort to an IV approach to solve endogeneity problems.