The organizational experience that members of the founding teambring to new ventures can influence how new business opportunitiesare pursued and their ultimate success; and yet, little is knownabout how the importance of such experience varies acrossentrepreneurial contexts. In this dissertation, I examine how thecomposition of founding teams has differential effects on newventure survival depending on the complexity of the business modelsentrepreneurs pursue.My study tracks the population (n=406), over twelve years, ofnew local telecommunications ventures in Georgia, that resultedfrom Telecom Act of 1996 deregulation. This landmark legislationspawned two distinct business models within the same industrysector; the two models differed in complexity and the demands theyplaced on founding teams. I use these natural differences tocompare, across the two models, the effects of industry,functional, and role experience in founding teams on rates ofsurvival. I analyze these effects using a Cox proportional hazardsmodel and supplement the quantitative evidence with qualitativeinsights obtained through interviews with founders and industryexperts.Findings from this research provide evidence that not allventures are alike, revealing how several predictors of survivalare contingent on differences in the complexity of the businessmodels founders pursue. In terms of industry experience, theshifting and "rugged landscapes" of complexity appear to quicklydevalue the benefits of related industry experience. In terms offunctional experience, complexity amplifies the importance offunctionally similar teams, enabling more effective communication,coordination, and adaptive learning. Finally, in terms of roleexperience, complexity reveals critical incompatibilities with thedominant logics, or "old mindsets," that can results from moreembedded forms of prior experience.More generally, this research contributes by advancing acontextualized theory of entrepreneurship that links features ofevolutionary adaptation and institutional constraint to inherentdifferences in the complexity of new ventures. The imprintingprocesses that underlie these two established bodies of theory areshown to be fundamental in shaping the dynamics of founding teams;yet, their effects appear largely contingent on the unique demandsthat differences in complexity place on entrepreneurialventures.
