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Team resilience building in response to co-founder exits

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  • Preller, Rebecca
  • Breugst, Nicola
  • Patzelt, Holger
  • Dibbern, Rieke

Abstract

Founding teams often experience the exit of co-founders. To develop theory about how founding teams deal with adversity emerging from the exit of one of their members, we take a team-resilience perspective and study the development of six founding teams. Our inductive model highlights how founding teams take different trajectories following team member exits, leading to different types of psychological closure, which impact the teams' resilience building. Our model also suggests how teams not engaging in distancing from the exit-related adversity experience additional adversity within the continuing team, eventually leading to team failure. Our findings challenge and extend extant studies on exits in founding teams and team resilience.

Suggested Citation

  • Preller, Rebecca & Breugst, Nicola & Patzelt, Holger & Dibbern, Rieke, 2023. "Team resilience building in response to co-founder exits," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 38(6).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:38:y:2023:i:6:s0883902623000423
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106328
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Thomas Hellmann & Manju Puri, 2002. "Venture Capital and the Professionalization of Start‐Up Firms: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 169-197, February.
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    Cited by:

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    4. Jian Liu & Rainer Harms, 2025. "Pathways to survive in abrupt adversities: a configurational approach to understanding the resilience of new venture teams," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 1447-1476, May.
    5. Lang, Ulrich & Berg, Victoria & von Nitzsch, Jannis & Engelen, Andreas, 2026. "The dynamics of narcissism in founding teams: Implications for co-founder turnover and venture growth," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 41(2).
    6. Wood, Matthew S. & Dwyer, Sean M. & Scheaf, David J., 2024. "Navigating the temporal commitments of entrepreneurial hype: Insights from entrepreneur and backer interactions in crowdfunded ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 39(6).
    7. Nowell, Pamela & Schou, Peter Kalum, 2025. "The promise of family systems theory in understanding the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of early-stage entrepreneurial teams," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    8. Burnell, Devin & Neubert, Emily & Fisher, Greg & Marvel, Matthew R. & Stevenson, Regan & Kuratko, Donald F., 2024. "Entrepreneurial hustle: Scale development and validation," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 39(4).

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