Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping who enters entrepreneurship, but not who reaches the top of the quality distribution. Using data on over 160,000 product launches on Product Hunt, we find that entrepreneurial entry increased sharply following the public release of ChatGPT-3.5, driven disproportionately by solo entrepreneurs. This shift toward solo entry is particularly pronounced in categories that historically favored team-based ventures. However, much of this growth reflects low-commitment, experimental entry and does not translate into greater representation among the highest-quality outcomes. Team-based ventures are increasingly dominant in the top tiers of platform rankings. These findings suggest that generative AI lowers barriers to solo entrepreneurship while reinforcing team-based advantages.
Awards:
Best Phd Paper Prize nominee at the 2026 SMS Annual Conference
Best Paper Award winner at the 2026 Joint Conference of Korean Management Societies (top overall prize among 48 participating academic societies)
Presentations:
2026 Wharton Business & Generative AI Conference (San Francisco, US)
2026 Strategic Management Society Annual Conference (Berlin, Germany)*
2026 Academy of Management Annual Meeting (Philadelphia, US)
2026 Research Policy Conference for Early Career Researchers (Virtual)*
2026 AAAI Summer Symposium (Seoul, South Korea)
Working paper available on SSRN / arXiv
*Scheduled for Presentation
How do entrepreneurs respond when their first venture outcome is neither a failure nor a clear success, but instead a marginal success? Leveraging Kickstarter’s project success threshold, we construct balanced comparison groups of failed, marginally successful, and clearly successful entrepreneurs and examine how early marginal success shapes subsequent behavior. We find that entrepreneurs who are marginally successful in their first project make significantly fewer strategic changes in subsequent projects. Given their narrow success and limited slack resources, they engage in less exploratory search and rely more heavily on established routines. Consistent with this pattern, they are more likely to be marginally successful again. In addition, marginally successful entrepreneurs build an early base of backers whose support and expectations encourage persistence on the platform despite repeated marginal performance. Together, these dynamics generate a self-reinforcing, persistent cycle of limited learning, entrenched routine, and marginal performance. Our findings show that early marginal success anchors entrepreneurs into a distinctive behavioral pathway, highlighting the overlooked yet consequential role of intermediate outcomes in entrepreneurial learning and adaptation.
Awards:
Best Paper Proceedings at the 2026 AOM Annual Meeting
Best Student Paper Finalist (Entrepreneurial Cognition) at the 2026 AOM Annual Meeting
Presentations:
2026 Academy of Management Annual Meeting (Philadelphia, US)
2026 Asian Management Research Consortium (Singapore)
Abridged working paper available on AOM Proceedings