Startups’ success is strongly influenced by the capabilities, traits, and dynamics of their founding teams. While the role of co-founders in shaping venture outcomes is well established in entrepreneurship literature, little is known about how they are selected in contexts where founding teams are externally assembled, such as within venture studios. Venture studios represent a distinct form of new venture creation (NVC), where organizations (rather than individuals) initiate and structure the entrepreneurial process. Central to this model is the strategic recruitment of external co-founders who are expected to lead ventures they did not originate. The goal of this paper is to investigate how co-founder selection processes are designed and implemented within venture studios, with a focus on the underlying decision criteria and timing strategies adopted in practice.
This research adopts a qualitative, exploratory design based on multi-case illustrative studies of three European venture studios: Rocket Internet, Hexa, and Mamazen. Findings reveal that the co-founder search in venture studios is a deliberate strategic activity. Rather than being recruited solely for executional tasks, co-founders are selected for their entrepreneurial mindset, risk appetite, and capacity to take full ownership of the venture. Venture Studios do not hire CEOs but rather recruit founder-like individuals to lead ventures alongside them, offering shared equity and full operational responsibility from day one. This inversion of traditional entrepreneurial logic positions venture builders as orchestrators of resources and talent, aligning with Gartner’s (1985) view of entrepreneurship as an organizing activity and the Resource-Based View’s emphasis on leveraging human capital.