Outlier entrepreneurs: Nonlinear paths and novel ventures

Abstract

Outliers in entrepreneurship are founders who are markedly different—both quantitatively and qualitatively—relative to the “normal” population. We use a power law perspective to hypothesize that, in order for new ventures to persist, founders with outlier endowments are more likely to have novel expectations about the opportunities they pursue and greater variation in the execution methods they employ, while normal founders are more likely to have much lower expectations and engage in a manner that is confined to fit within the smaller scope of explicit market demand. We leverage data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II, a longitudinal representative sample of 1214 nascent entrepreneurs organizing resources in preparation for startup, and employ fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to investigate our hypothesized relationships. In support, the results suggest that founders need to stay in their lane for their ventures to persist: whereas outlier founders have the option to successfully pursue more ambitious opportunities—those that are innovative, growth-oriented, and international focused—normal founders are primarily resigned to niche opportunities. Even more interesting, ventures are much less likely to persist when there is a misalignment between endowments, expectations, and engagement (i.e., when outlier founders pursue niche opportunities and normal founders pursue aspirational opportunities). This study makes meaningful contributions to the power law perspective, to the growing interest in outliers and exceptionality in entrepreneurship, and to the domain’s aggregated knowledge of new venture persistence.