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Negotiations with venture capitalists (VCs) play a crucial role in the entrepreneurial financing process. Habitual entrepreneurs are generally able to secure more venture capital funding and on better deal terms than novices. This study investigates the disparities in negotiation competencies between habitual and novice entrepreneurs during VC funding negotiations.

This study employed a qualitative approach to investigate the variation in negotiation competencies between habitual and novice entrepreneurs, utilizing the negotiation competency model (NCM). The data analysis and interpretation adopted an inductive concept development approach. A total of 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with seasoned VCs located in Europe, all of whom had actively engaged in funding negotiations with both habitual and novice entrepreneurs.

The findings revealed substantial disparities between novice and habitual entrepreneurs in VC negotiations. Although not all competencies of the NCM exhibited variances, the results indicate three primary dimensions contributing to these differences: expertise, reputation, and negotiation competence.

This study is groundbreaking as it represents one of the earliest empirical investigations into the entrepreneurial negotiation competencies within VC negotiations. The findings endeavor to narrow the gap between novice and habitual entrepreneurs in VC negotiations by pinpointing the distinct variations between these two groups, which hold significant practical implications. Furthermore, this study expands the conceptual framework of the NCM by identifying supplementary competencies within the realm of VC negotiations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare what criteria novice and habitual entrepreneurs use while adding members to the founding team.

This paper uses conjoint analysis (CA) to provide the order of preference for the “choice attributes.” The logic of CA is that even if two or more attributes influence the choice, it is unlikely that those attributes will have equal importance for founders with different entrepreneurial experiences.

This paper found a significant difference in the ranking of the attributes by novice and habitual entrepreneurs. In novice entrepreneurs, the effect of direct ties in the form of kinship ties has the highest preference, followed by prior social contact and prior work relations. However, personal friendships and resource dependency received lesser importance than interpersonal attraction because of the similarity in vision, beliefs and values. Habitual entrepreneurs, however, valued resource dependency and prior work relations more than kinship ties. Also, unlike novice entrepreneurs, habitual entrepreneurs sought cofounders from their indirect ties.

There has been an explosion of interest and funding for programs that help entrepreneurs establish a cofounding team. The authors inform these programs related to the decision concerning assisting novice and habitual entrepreneurs.

While prior studies examined a single attribute at a time, the strength of this study lies in simultaneously tapping all attributes, along with multiple indicators for each attribute. Additionally, this study distinguishes the selection criteria of cofounders based on the entrepreneurial expertise of the lead founder.

Previous studies demonstrate that novice entrepreneurs access fewer resources than experienced portfolio entrepreneurs. From an entrepreneurial learning perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate why they differ in terms of accessing critical resources.

The authors studied entrepreneurs in the Norwegian offshore petroleum industry, which is conservative with strict regulatory regimes and overall high-entry barriers, and in which a good reputation is crucial. Hence, the authors argue that the industry is well suited for a study of the research questions.

The novices’ mind-sets were anchored in technological ideas and they had problems in prioritizing the critical business relationships and market opportunities. They were also unwilling to compromise on ownership control and to disclose business secrets. Portfolio entrepreneurs, on the other hand, acknowledged that technology had had little value if they could not convince market actors. Therefore, they proactively aimed to establish business relations early in the process. They emphasized that a major lesson was to avoid developing excessive attachment to the product but to be willing to share the risks and profits with other industry and market actors.

The authors had a limited number of cases, and future contributions should aim to study a larger pool of enterprises, preferably in different industries and national contexts.

The findings indicate that novices can learn from the willingness to compromise, in terms of ownership control and disclosure of confidential information to business partners, shown by experienced entrepreneurs. They should also be more willing to involve potential customers at an early stage to gain market knowledge and access.

From a learning perspective, this is the first study investigating why novice and experienced entrepreneurs differ in terms of accessing critical resources.

Decision-making biases play substantial roles in entrepreneurs' decisions and the fate of entrepreneurial enterprises, as well. Previous studies have assumed all entrepreneurs are homogeneous in their proneness to biases, therefore inadvertently creating a crucial research gap by ignoring the role of business experience in the genesis of biases. Furthermore, there is a lack of research on women entrepreneurs' decision-making biases. Thus, this paper's main objective is to explore two influential biases of overconfidence and over-optimism in novice and habitual women entrepreneurs.

The data for this study were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with 21 Iranian novice and habitual women entrepreneurs active in four high-tech sectors of biotech, nanotech, aerospace and advanced medicine. The gathered data were analyzed by thematic analysis.

According to the findings, while habitual entrepreneurs are prone to all three types of overconfidence (overestimation, overplacement and overprecision) and over-optimism, novice entrepreneurs do not show any signs of overplacement or overprecision.

There are certain valuable implications resulting from this study that could be of use for not only future researchers in the field of entrepreneurial decision-making and women entrepreneurship but also for women entrepreneurs running entrepreneurial enterprises, especially small businesses.

This paper offers certain novel contributions to the field of entrepreneurship by not only exploring biases in women entrepreneurs exclusively but also scrutinizing biases in novice (first-time) and habitual (experienced) entrepreneurs comparatively.

This paper aims to present a study of the role of prior start‐up experience as a source of learning in the entrepreneurial process. Three learning outcomes are examined with respect to a comparison between habitual and novice entrepreneurs: skills for coping with liabilities of newness, preference for effectual reasoning, and attitudes towards failure.

This is an empirical study based on statistical analysis conducted on a sample of 231 Swedish entrepreneurs that have started a new independent firm in 2004.

The findings suggest that habitual and novice entrepreneurs differ significantly with regard to several interesting aspects of the hypothesized dimensions.

The findings provide a better understanding of start‐up experience as a source of learning and its effects on the skills, preferences and attitudes of habitual entrepreneurs.

Previous research has suggested that prior start‐up experience is an important source of entrepreneurial learning, but has not put much effort into explaining how this particular type of experience influences various learning outcomes on an individual level. The present study advances these suggestions by showing how prior start‐up experience influences entrepreneurs' skills for coping with liabilities of newness, effectual reasoning and attitudes towards failures. Moreover, the study contributes to existing literature and research on entrepreneurial learning by developing explorative measures of individual learning outcomes that have been highlighted as influenced by prior experience in recent entrepreneurship research.

This study aims to show what type of directors founders (or entrepreneurs) first appoint to the board and how these appointments differ across experienced and novice entrepreneurs.

The sample consists of the human capital of board members in 443 new ventures in the computer software and information technology industries between 2000 and 2014. The hypotheses were tested using tobit regression.

The findings in this study reveal that compared to novice entrepreneurs, experienced entrepreneurs tend to appoint early boards with greater human capital (entrepreneurial, technical/scientific and industry-specific) and with greater functional diversity. In contrast, novice entrepreneurs tend to appoint early boards with greater finance and director experience.

The value of this research lies in filling the gap in the current literature by comparing the board appointment/selection behavior of novice and experienced entrepreneurs, which is relatively underexplored.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Habitual entrepreneurs are prone to all three types of overconfidence (overestimation, overplacement and overprecision) and to overoptimism. Novice entrepreneurs are prone to one type of overconfidence (overestimation) and to overoptimism.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to theorize on the mechanisms underlying the development of entrepreneurial expertise. While prior studies have identified differences between the behavior of novice and expert entrepreneurs, the mechanisms that cause these differences have not received sufficient attention.

This paper systematically reviews the extant literature on entrepreneurial expertise and builds the conceptual framework by employing an action-control belief framework to propose mechanisms underlying the development of expert behavior.

This paper argues that differences in behavior between novice and expert entrepreneurs stem from self-perceptions of their ability to act. More specifically, stronger action-control beliefs encourage entrepreneurs to create new interpretations of the world over time; develop and use strategies that allow them to rely on perceived control over means and ends, their perceived capacity, and their agency; and hence behave more like experts.

This paper suggests that strategy, capacity, and control beliefs are key in individuals’ decisions of whether to engage in entrepreneurial action and that expert entrepreneurs hold stronger beliefs than novices. Positive experiences, particularly those associated with deliberate practice, contribute to developing these beliefs and, more broadly, to entrepreneurial expertise.

This paper proposes that the mechanism of transformation from novice to expert behavior can be attributed to positive changes in deeply held beliefs about strategy (i.e. possible means-ends frameworks), capacity (i.e. access to means), and control (i.e. perceived efficacy). Each of the beliefs can develop separately from others and at different pace. In other words, this work explains why novice and expert entrepreneurs behave differently.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate empirically that differences in characteristics of entrepreneurs result in benefits from different elements of a regional incubator programme.

The authors use mixed methods consisting of in-depth interviews and a survey of 100 incubatees in order to study entrepreneurs within a specific incubator programme called the Growth Factories located in Region Zealand, Denmark.

The authors find that there are significant differences in the perceived benefit of various business incubator elements for incubatees depending on their entrepreneurial characteristics.

Future studies are particularly important in order to learn which elements provide the different kinds of entrepreneurs with a critical factor in determining their success or failure.

The conclusions have importance for regional government and development managers aiming at designing new business incubators. The authors suggest that in order to enhance the effect of incubator programmes they must be tailor-made to the individual entrepreneur.

Previous studies have either tended to treat incubator programmes as a uniform entity, where all entrepreneurs receive the same service, or they have treated all entrepreneurs as a uniform group, even though it is well known that entrepreneurs vary considerably in their characteristics. This paper overcomes the gap.

This study investigates the influence of entrepreneurial experience on small business investment. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether entrepreneurs with more prior start-up experience are better able to identify business opportunities and successfully transform these opportunities into investment projects.

The empirical setting in this study is Vietnam. The authors employ a panel data of small businesses (mostly households) from 2005 to 2013, and use a fixed effect method to estimate the regression coefficients. The results are also re-checked using the general method of moments and matching technique.

Empirically, it is found that entrepreneurial experience is an important determinant of investment decisions. Specifically, entrepreneurs with one start-up experience make more investments than novice entrepreneurs. However, entrepreneurs with more than one start-up experience do not make more investments than entrepreneurs with one start-up experience.

This is country-specific research. Further study may employ data from multi-countries to re-test the validity of the hypotheses.

This study provides a new perspective for analysing the role of entrepreneurial experience on entrepreneurial investments. It shows that prior start-up experience may turn out to be a liability to entrepreneurs since it restricts their ability to identify new opportunities.