Member Experience, Use of External Assistance and Evaluation of Business Ideas

How do members' experience and external interactions shape evaluation of the team's business idea? With a sample of 74 teams that participated in a business idea competition, we showed that experience as defined by size, mean work experience, and assistance from individuals with business founding experience related positively to the teams' business idea evaluations. The benefits of external founders are more pronounced for smaller than for larger teams. Having a founder in the team did not relate to idea evaluation but interaction effects showed smaller sized teams had worse evaluations if they did not have a founder in the team.