New venture dissolution and the comobility of new venture teams

Abstract

Abstract: While the dissolution of new ventures is a common phenomenon in the organizational landscape, it seldom means the end of the road for those involved in the new venture. Nevertheless, most research treats this dissolution with a sense of finality. Using the Danish Integrated Database for Labor Market Research (IDA), we explore the persistence of cofounders and early employees to continue their work relationships after the dissolution of the new venture. We investigate where these team members continue their career and whether they pursue entrepreneurship together in another new venture. Overall, over 18.3% move jointly, and comobility is more prevalent among new venture team members who worked jointly prior to founding the new venture and among those new venture teams demonstrating high levels of homogeneity. Moreover, comovers tend toward small firms, and comobility occurs largely in similar industry. A large share of comovers move to new ventures, which is indicative of serial or habitual new venture teams. This also raises further question on team-level dimension of learning from failure.