Founders for hire? The role of venture studios in breaking the individual-opportunity nexus

Entrepreneurship theory has often posited the founder as the central agent of venture creation; from identifying opportunities, to mobilizing resources, and driving execution. We examine how venture studios – organizations that systematically create new ventures by taking over traditionally founder-led processes – challenge this assumption. Drawing on an inductive multiple case study of 16 venture studios with 50 primary and secondary interviews, we reveal how venture studios develop and validate ideas independently from founders prior to recruiting them, and how they coordinate the entrepreneurial process when these functions are separated. Our findings contribute to the literature on the individual-opportunity nexus, the entrepreneurial process and open the research agenda on venture studios as a new phenomenon in entrepreneurship. • Venture studios challenge the assumption that founder and idea are connected. • We provide qualitative evidence from 16 venture studios using 50 interviews. • Venture studios disentangle opportunity discovery from venture creation. • They coordinate the entrepreneurial process through managerial mechanisms. • Venture studios shift entrepreneurial agency from individual to the organization.