Holding Friends Closer or Keeping Them at a Distance: The Intimacy with Founding Members and Its Effect on Entrepreneurs’ Effectual Problem Setting

Abstract Whether founding with friends will affect entrepreneurs’ venturing model? Based on construal level theory, this study shows a fresh look into entrepreneurs’ intimacy with other founding members and its effects on their cognition of ongoing venturing projects. We argue that the stronger intimacy with other founding members shortens the perceived psychological distance between an entrepreneur and an ongoing project, thus lowering the entrepreneur’s construal level. The construal level mediates the effect on the problem space the entrepreneurs perceive. Using two-wave survey data from 162 Chinese founding teams, we find that the strong intimacy with other founding members results in less effectual problem setting through lower construal level. Moreover, the indirect effect is moderated by venturing team size in the way that a large venturing team size will weaken the effect. From the construal level theory perspective, our findings may explain why and how founding with friends may affect the venturing model choice and highlight the importance of entrepreneurs’ surrounding relationships within founding teams. This study also provides some potential practical implications for the entrepreneurs when founding with friends.