Founder or Joiner? The Role of Preferences and Context in Shaping Different Entrepreneurial Interests

Entrepreneurial ventures rely not only on founders, but also on “joiners” – startup employees who are attracted to entrepreneurship but do not want to be founders themselves. Drawing upon both individual and contextual-level perspectives of entrepreneurship, we examine how interests in being a founder or a joiner form prior to the first career transition. We find that individuals with founder and joiner interests share similar preferences for entrepreneurial job attributes such as autonomy and risk, but differ significantly in the nature and strength of these preferences. Contextual factors such as norms, role models, and opportunities exhibit very different relationships with founder and joiner interests. Most interestingly, we find that individuals’ preferences partially condition the relationship between contextual factors and different entrepreneurial interests. In particular, individuals with strong preferences for entrepreneurial job attributes appear to form a founder interest irrespective of their entrepreneurial context, while those who lack these preferences do not form a founder interest even when exposed to entrepreneurial norms or role models. Joiner interests, on the other hand, appear more susceptible to contextual factors, and this relationship is most pronounced for individuals with preferences that predispose them to entrepreneurship. This study highlights joiners as a distinct type of entrepreneurial actor who differ from founders in fundamental ways, while also demonstrating the importance of considering both preferences and context jointly in the study of entrepreneurship.