•The paper explains why atypical nascent entrepreneurs may not receive the feedback they need for elaborating a venture idea.•The paper shows that a Black/White woman nascent entrepreneur is likely to be sanctioned for entering a profession with which she is seen as incongruent.•Although both are atypical entrepreneurs, nascent Black and White women entrepreneurs are associated with different stereotypes

This article extends existing scholarship that views hype primarily as an individual entrepreneurial storytelling strategy for generating excitement about a venture's future. We argue that hype also functions as a cultural marker, distinguishing entrepreneurial modes of communication and behavior from those of traditional corporate culture. By tracing the conceptual history of hype, we demonstrate

Whether individuals grew up as first-born or later-born siblings in their families can influence their behavior well into adulthood. This study examines the impact of birth order on networking behavior and entrepreneurial action, integrating birth order theory with psychological threat response theories. It suggests that first-born and later-born entrepreneurs inherently differ in their social responses

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed the emergence of a poly-crisis era in which overlapping, causally entangled crises, such as pandemics, war, inflation, natural disasters, etc. converge to challenge assumptions of societal stability upon which much of the field's knowledge base has been developed over the last few decades. In this editorial, we propose a poly-crisis perspective to entrepreneurship

This paper shows that angel investor grants encourage new investors to enter the risk finance market, where they syndicate investments with other investors. We argue that this results from the high cost of information acquisition for new investors. New investors bring additional capital into the market but provide little managerial support. However, as these investors join syndicates, ventures can

In equity crowdfunding (ECF), early investments serve as signals of venture potential to prospective investors, making them more likely to join an offering. We argue that ECF platform team members can exploit this mechanism and convey false signals to unsophisticated investors. Data from a prominent ECF platform indicate that platform team members “invest” in ventures that exhibit weaker post-campaign

Raising money from family and friends is a common form of startup funding. However, we know little about how accepting funds from these individuals influences an entrepreneur's risk-taking preferences. We theorize that as an entrepreneur's relationship with an investor strengthens, the entrepreneur is more likely to anticipate guilt that could emerge from a potential venture failure, which prompts

Drawing on entrepreneurial financing literature, we investigate how venture capital (VC) firms' investment horizons affect their ventures' product quality problems. We argue that when a VC firm has a short investment horizon, it may guide its portfolio companies to develop new products fast to increase the likelihood of successful exits. However, this deliberate effort may act as a double-edged sword

We draw from theories of generations and imprinting to introduce an alternative conceptualization of the effects of age on entrepreneurship—namely, entrepreneurs' generational imprints. We theorize how imprinted characteristics of entrepreneurs from a conservative generation (vs. a progressive generation) are positively (negatively) associated with higher levels of financial returns and negatively

We develop a theoretical framework explaining how the evolving uncertainty imperatives of the nascent, emerging, and mature stages of a market category influence the entrepreneurial stories that audiences judge as legitimately distinct. Our focus is on the sensemaking role of different story components in shaping these judgments, both independently and through their holistic interplay. We also relate

Coordination frictions prevent the efficient adoption and governance of blockchain-based platforms. Crypto funds (CFs) create value by smoothing frictions on decentralized digital platforms (DDPs). CF-backed DDPs obtain higher valuations in the primary token market, outperform their peers after issuing tokens, and benefit from token price appreciation around CF investment disclosure in the secondary

This study explores how corporate venture capital (CVC) units can be configured to effectively achieve innovation performance and succeed amidst the tensions they face at the intersection of the corporate and venture domain. Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 30 dedicated CVC investment arms, we analyze how successful units configure their internal arrangements in response

While we understand the importance of entrepreneurs listening to stakeholders, we lack a sufficient theory-driven understanding of why some entrepreneurs and their ventures can listen to their stakeholders more effectively than others. We offer a listening model of venture growth based on listening theories and the literatures on new ventures and capability development. Listening is initially facilitated

Research on social media influencers and entrepreneurship tends to adopt an influencer-as-entrepreneur perspective by examining how influencers leverage social media as entrepreneurial opportunities. However, it remains unclear how entrepreneurs in the audience interpret and leverage influencer content in their entrepreneurial endeavors. Using a two-study approach, Study 1 inductively uncovers that

Entrepreneurs seeking legitimacy for their stigmatized products with mainstream audiences must deploy strategies to redefine their products' cultural significance. This paper investigates how the body, often a focal point of stigma, serves as the foundation for these strategies. Through an analysis of exemplary cases in the sex toy industry, we identify three strategies—visibilizing, obfuscating, and

This paper examines how entrepreneurs manage temporal commitments associated with hyped audience expectations. We examine hype in the crowdfunding context, conducting an inductive study of 155 entrepreneur project updates from five new ventures that mobilized significant funding on Kickstarter. Entrepreneur updates were matched with 17,807 backer comments, creating call and response pairs. Using LIWC

There is a growing interest in exploring the practice-based foundations of entrepreneurship education. Despite significant advancement in scholarship regarding entrepreneurship education, our understanding of the ‘educator’, especially how they develop and sustain their abilities to enable learning in practice-based entrepreneurship education, remains sorely understudied. In contrast to existing cognitive

This study investigates which local conditions enable community-based enterprises (CBEs) to create impact. Advancing our limited understanding of the various contexts that enable CBEs to tackle societal issues locally, we investigate supportive conditions across 77 CBEs driving the energy transition in their geographic community. Through qualitative comparative analysis, we identify four condition

Hype occurs when expectations exceed reality. For founders promoting innovative technologies, hype often attracts the resources necessary to grow a new venture. Hype is gaining prominence in entrepreneurship literature, and it is understood that many entrepreneurs jumpstart their ventures by promoting optimistic, future projections to entice stakeholders. Unfortunately, little is known about how skilled

This editorial reflects on a strong recurring theme noticed when evaluating the JBV publications of 2023 (Volume 38, Issues 1–6) for the annual best paper award. We refer to this theme as “whole-person entrepreneurship”, i.e., how does the who of entrepreneurship shape the what of entrepreneurship. It consists of articles that sought an understanding of entrepreneurs as children, mothers, spouses,

Prior studies of craft-based categories have emphasized member ventures' prototypical features of smallness and innovativeness, collaboration and cohesiveness norms, and a perception of shared fate forging their strong oppositional identity vis-a-vis industrialized producers. However, our study of craft breweries reveals the potential pitfalls of rigidly adhering to these features and norms during

We investigate the impact of friction-reducing labor market reforms on regional high-growth entrepreneurship (HGE) through the effects of reduced legal enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs). We draw on new institutional economic theory and the external enablement framework, with insights from the theory of market-preserving federalism, to explore how these reforms enable (disable) HGE within

We investigate a strategy entrepreneurs can use to manage their emotions prior to pitching: . We theorize that internally acknowledging anxiety and interpreting it as a reflection of one's passion for the venture can make passionate feelings salient, facilitate expressions of passion during pitches, and increase judges' evaluations of pitch performance. A field study and a randomized experiment support

The concepts of ‘scaling,’ ‘scalability,’ and ‘scale-up’ are increasingly used in business research and practice. However, the literature reveals a range of definitions for each, and often, their meanings are only implied. This diminishes the ability to build cumulative and meaningful insight - and conduct research - on each concept. In this editorial, we offer a systematic review that assesses and

In this paper, we draw from the theory of social and emotional aging to examine the mechanisms of age-related emotional exhaustion among entrepreneurs. Based on longitudinal data from a sample of 840 entrepreneurs in four European countries, our study shows that, with increasing biological age, entrepreneurs experience less emotional exhaustion due to their enhanced psychological capital and because

Effectuation theory posits that the accrual of disparate resources from various stakeholders is key to opening up transformational opportunities to the effectual venture. Here we aim to theoretically unravel the social exchange processes of the ‘effectual ask’—petitioning resource pre-commitments—pertaining to the so-called ‘crazy quilt’ principle. To do so, we introduce and integrate into effectuation

Entrepreneurial hustle refers to the urgent and unorthodox actions entrepreneurs use to address obstacles and opportunities under uncertainty. Research examining this construct has been limited by the lack of a valid and reliable measure to capture these actions. Within this paper, we advance the conceptualization of the construct and develop a measure to capture the behavioral tendency to engage in

The primary purpose of this research is to examine the extent to which positioning hybrid ventures as more or less congruent with their category influences perceptions of their legitimacy. To do so, we first introduce and define the notion of a as an institutional context which combines two or more dominant institutional logics that both constrain and enable organizational action. We then construct

For more than a century, discussion of the connections between religion and entrepreneurship has pointed to what we would now label questions of identity. Our study of 25 participants in a program in Northern Kenya that aimed to introduce and stimulate capitalist entrepreneurship within extremely poor pastoralist communities shows that differences in participants' religious social identities strongly

We consider the influence of inter- and intra-individual team dynamics on entrepreneurial passion change and the relevance of passion change to important outcomes. Drawing on person-environment fit theory, we hypothesize first, that in newly formed teams, the entrepreneurial passion levels of individuals are impacted by their peers' passion (the average passion of their teammates). Second, we expect

We explore the concept of organizational hybridity from the perspective of the Judgment-Based Approach to entrepreneurship (JBA). The JBA provides much-needed microfoundations for hybridity in the form of a more nuanced, action-based view of the market mechanism in shaping enterprises. Rather than a problem of conflicting logics at the organizational level, hybridity is redefined as entrepreneurial

We analyse entrepreneurial entry along the dimensions of informal-formal and necessity-opportunity entrepreneurship, distinguishing between them yet considering them jointly. While the dominant view in the literature conflates necessity with informal entry, and opportunity with formal entry, we hypothesise that informal entrepreneurship may be attractive to higher-income individuals as a testing ground

Why do some entrepreneurs pivot their business models in a crisis, while others are more passive? Integrating Conservation of Resources theory with work on crisis rumination, we developed a micro-level model to explain why entrepreneurs who are under strain due to a crisis, as indicated by experiencing crisis rumination, adopt an active approach – i.e., using active coping and engaging in pivoting

This research addresses the impact of the remarkable rise in populism on innovative new ventures. Integrating institutional theory with gender role congruity theory, we reason that the surge of populist discourse by a nation's top political leaders decreases the innovativeness of new ventures, and this negative relationship is more pronounced for women entrepreneurs. We also consider two critical yet

Uncertainty permeates the world of entrepreneurship. Yet, understanding how entrepreneurs perceive and make decisions in the face of uncertainty remains elusive. The value of Bayesian decision models with their probabilistic-based assumptions is only of limited help to entrepreneurs in solving the problem of uncertainty. This research extends the utility of modes of entrepreneurial cognition as a supplementary

Although political turnover is said to be a healthy component of the business environment, the literature is equivocal about the effects of regime change on early-stage entrepreneurial activity. I present incumbent displacement—the electoral defeat of an incumbent political party's candidate—as a source of regime change, and I analyze how this affects business formation through the lens of real options

We explore the importance of sustaining commitment in inter-firm relationships in the corporate venture capital setting. We find that a corporate investor's past behavior in terms of committing to investment relationships and not abandoning them prematurely confers reputational benefits that increase the likelihood of its participation in future investment opportunities. These reputational effects

We consider the effect of employee stock options on employee mobility and employee entrepreneurship. Employee stock options are firm-specific, long-term, equity-based incentive instruments—attractive properties for affecting employee behaviors and decisions. We argue that employee stock options reduce employee mobility levels. By contrast, we posit that employee stock options increase employee entrepreneurship

We examine how parental divorce in early life affects performance in entrepreneurship in adulthood. Drawing on life course theory and empirical analyses of US self-employment and childhood data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we show that entrepreneurs' experience of parental divorce in childhood benefits their entrepreneurial performance in adulthood through a gain in self-efficacy

While age is positively related to entrepreneurial success, the prevailing stereotype favors younger entrepreneurs. To better understand how these contradictory perspectives influence funding decisions, we examine the role of age in a sample of 41,602 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns from Indiegogo. We find a negative correlation between an entrepreneur's apparent age and funding performance, indicating

This study examines the impact of mandatory legal form choices on startups' debt financing opportunities. We posit that an entrepreneur's initial legal form decision serves as a reliable signal to outside lenders, reducing adverse selection concerns. Using data from German startups, we find that limited liability companies with low capital requirements disproportionately secure less debt than their

Crises have significant implications for entrepreneurs' businesses. Female entrepreneurs are often found to suffer from crises due to their marginalized positions. Despite the increasing research at the nexus of crisis, entrepreneurship, and gender, how a crisis may influence investors' funding decisions concerning female entrepreneurs and whether different macro crises bring with them different implications

Is empathy a uniformly good thing for entrepreneurs? Contrasting the hitherto predominantly positive view advocated by the extant entrepreneurship literature, we develop a novel model of entrepreneurial empathy's mechanisms and suggest a ‘too-much-of-a-good-thing’ perspective. We empirically confirm this model using a dataset of 4425 real entrepreneurs, where we find that empathy influences entrepreneurial

Abstract not available

In many informal economies, entrepreneurs face a visibility paradox: increasing visibility to resource-granting stakeholders simultaneously increases exposure to resource-extracting stakeholders. To investigate this phenomenon, we leverage a unique, hand-collected, small-area census dataset of firms in the township of Delft in Cape Town, South Africa, providing rare insight into a population of otherwise

Persistent war is an increasing reality for millions of people worldwide. War contexts create a wide range of problems, but paradoxically may fuel some entrepreneurial activities. This inductive, qualitative study explores how an entrepreneurial ecosystem was launched and sustained amid an ongoing civil war despite repeated setbacks, disruptions, and impediments to pursuing collective goals. Building

Although academic interest in organizational scaling is growing, extant research has focused primarily on the antecedents and processes, neglecting how employees experience scaling. Drawing on the scale-up, firm growth, and well-being literature, we take an employee perspective to examine the impact of scaling on employee burnout and job satisfaction. Using a sample of 10,908 new venture employees

The growing phenomenon of highly valued startups (e.g., unicorns) poses fundamental questions for entrepreneurship research. We posit that venture scalability and VC funding availability may explain startups' IPO valuations (and timing). Highly scalable ventures may not only capture very large market opportunities, but their scaling strategies may also be constrained by the governance and regulatory

We examine whether and when female representation in decision-making groups of venture capital firms affects the firms' decision to fund woman-led businesses. By developing an intra- and inter-group categorization framework for group decision-making, we argue that, in the male-dominated venture capital industry, decision-making groups with higher female representation are less likely to fund woman-led

Many entrepreneurial opportunities are associated with events, including sports competitions, races and tournaments, concerts and music festivals, and conferences and exhibitions, yet this variant of entrepreneurship has not been specifically accounted for in the literature. We integrate insights from entrepreneurship research with research on temporary organizational forms, stakeholder theory, and

Drawing from expectancy violation theory, we investigate how entrepreneurs' language-based expressions of their political ideology influence the performance of their crowdfunding campaigns. We argue that crowdfunding funders expect campaigns to be apolitical, suggesting that entrepreneurs' expressing their political ideologies – regardless of the specific ideology – create a negative expectancy violation

Leveraging work on role theory and age stereotypes, we deploy a randomized experiment that uses AI to manipulate founder age in fundraising appeals. Broadly, we find that age perceptions matter to investors. Using 949 equity crowdfunding observations, we show that entrepreneurs benefit from appearing older when seeking funding. However, these benefits wane as age perceptions increase, and age perceptions

We study how the physical effects of climate change motivate entrepreneurs to develop and protect climate change adaptation (CCA) intellectual property (IP) in heterogeneous ways across countries. Integrating the sustainable entrepreneurship literature with the attention-based view, we show that country-level climate impact redirects managerial attention to the disruptive potential of climate change

We hypothesize that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals enable crowdfunding platforms to attract more investors and thus survive longer. Using data on the population of 508 security-based platforms established in the 38 OECD countries between 2007 and 2020, we document that platforms with higher levels of ESG selection criteria are more likely to survive over time. The importance of ESG

We study failures between 1993 and 2017 in the complete population of 1731 English and Scottish university spinoffs founded since 1977. We borrow and expand the concept of density dependence from organizational ecology to theorize that a spinoff's propensity to fail is affected by the number of spinoffs active not only in the aggregate population but also within its parent university's portfolio. We

Entrepreneurial opportunities emerge and dissipate over time, yet little is known about how and why they vary in their ephemerality and what the implications of temporal variance are for the optimal timing of entrepreneurial action. Building on the actualization theory of opportunity and signal processing theory, we propose that profit possibilities exist in the convolution of consumer desire, technical

As ‘scaling’ has gained significant attention from different stakeholders, multiple definitions have emerged, endangering the legitimacy of the area as a distinct field of inquiry. Using a mathematics perspective, we define scaling in the business context as a time-limited process of exponential growth. We then identify drivers of scaling and show that scaling for competitive advantage requires increasing