Organizational best practices of company builders – a qualitative study

In this paper we qualitatively explore the phenomenon of company builders – a new form of venture incubation that has only recently been established. The paper distinguishes company builders from other incubation models, analyses their organizational structure and maps their new venture creation process. Based on a multiple case study of nine company builders located in three European start-up hubs, we find that organizational structures of company builders are dependent on organization size. Company builders with less than 50 employees tend to feature functional line organizations, while larger company builders feature project-matrix organizations. In terms of venture creation process, company builders follow a seven step process, which is mapped in terms of inputs, activities and outputs. We discuss the implications of this study for the extant literature and offer directions for future research.