Horse and Cart: The Role of Order in New Ventures

Entrepreneurs need to accumulate different types of resources to take the initial steps to grow their ventures. While much is known about the configurations of resources that improve venture success, less is known on how ventures should initially accumulate resources to begin to exploit valuable opportunities. Using agent-based simulations, we classify resources by the functions (search and execution) that they provide. We find that acquiring search resources before execution resources leads to more valuable opportunities, but only under conditions of higher uncertainty. We contribute to the entrepreneurial resource acquisition literature by showing how resource order may affect an entrepreneur’s ability in opportunity discovery, evaluation, and exploitation. We draw inferences on contingencies that can increase the salience of resource order on venture success.