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The Role Of Early Customers In The Venture Creation Process, Maya Kumar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While startups’ interactions with early potential customers may occur long before product creation, entrepreneurs often fail to recognize how these interactions impact startup development. My research proposes that early customers are central influences and develops a model of customer interactions. More specifically, my dissertation focuses on answering: When and how do startups interact with early customers during the venture creation process, and how do these interactions create path dependence for the type of organization being created?

I undertook an inductive, qualitative process study of nine startups located in incubators and studied customer interactions in near-real-time. My findings show that types …