The phenomenon of academic spin-offs (ASOs) has been widely studied in recent times. Scholars have mainly concentrated on identifying the factors that favours the phenomenon and the incentive alignments of the parties involved in the process. These works tend to remain static in nature by solely investigating the ex ante determinants of the process, that is the elements that favoured a context to be more profitable than others, usually in terms of the number of ASOs generated. More recently scholars have also acknowledged that ASOs are heterogeneous firms and have started investigating the development process of such firms. It has been highlighted that ASOs need to overcome certain defined stage of growth in order to become established firms in the market. Our work continues this line of investigation and aims to gives evidence that the paths of ASO development are heterogeneous themselves. We investigate the flows of knowledge taking place within and across the firm in a dynamic manner, at various stage of the development process of the firm: we study the governance of knowledge in a sub-population of ASOs and give evidence of the variety of possible ways the firm can develop.