Problem
New businesses run on expectation. Before results arrive, a startup needs attention, money and belief. Hype can drive a venture forward. It can also push it off course. We wanted to understand how that energy is generated and what happens when it takes hold. Understanding that matters for anyone building a business, backing one, or trying to make sure it lasts.
Science
We examined how a hyped fintech venture framed its goals to match sky-high external expectations, and how the moral boundaries it drew around growth shaped what it did next. We also asked how a single organisation comes to lead a new entrepreneurial ecosystem, a network of startups, investors and supporters built around a shared opportunity. Through an in-depth case study of one such ecosystem and the organisation founded to lead it, we identified two types of effort that must work together: making the ecosystem itself credible and establishing the right to lead it.
Outcome
A 'growth at all costs' mindset can create what our research calls 'antagonistic excitement' among employees and embed a culture that tolerates reckless behaviour. Intense emotions and hardening assumptions, rather than deliberate strategy, drove the venture we studied toward misconduct and loss of trust. Changing what the venture was willing to do in the name of growth was how trust was rebuilt. If hype can corrode, momentum can also be deliberately, and constructively, built. The “architect” of an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem can coordinate activities across multiple audiences through a clear shared guiding mantra. Focusing too heavily on the demands from one audience at the expense of others creates strain. Building the network's credibility and securing the right to lead it are two separate tasks, but doing both in turn builds momentum that keeps growing.
Change
These studies map the two faces of entrepreneurial expectation. One shows how mismanaged hype can distort behaviour and dissolve the trust a venture depends on. The other shows how carefully built momentum can bring a whole ecosystem into being. Understanding how belief is built, sustained and sometimes abused is essential to building businesses that are not only fast-growing but responsible and durable. This work gives founders, investors and the organisations that support them evidence to act on.
Read more:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106506
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2026.106577