Strategies of unicorn startups: how these positive deviants compare to early-stage and Fortune 500 ventures

Shelby Renee Meek · Birton J. Cowden

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Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences Business Strategies and Innovation Private Equity and Venture Capital

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to begin to explore the strategic priorities of unicorn ventures as pursuers of market disruption. This study approaches this task by drawing on the positive deviance concept for studying outliers with the intent of understanding the strategic priorities of these ventures. Design/methodology/approach This is a comparison study of the priorities of 75 unicorn ventures, 37 early-stage ventures and 45 Fortune 500 organizations. The authors use computer-aided text analysis to conduct within-sample and between-sample means comparison tests of 12,487 newswires from 2022. Findings Where early-stage ventures emphasize their mission, and Fortune 500 companies emphasize financial results, unicorn ventures, occupy the middle of the spectrum, balancing their priorities between pursuing market disruption and achieving financial results. These high-growth outliers indicate their priorities by using significantly less positive tone, affective and prosocial language, and focusing less on corporate social responsibility initiatives, compared to early-stage ventures (and using more of this language compared to Fortune 500 ventures). An additional finding emphasizes that public Fortune 500 companies focus significantly more on money than their topic of interest. Originality/value This work has implications for understanding the strategic priorities of entrepreneurial ventures in different development stages. The results suggest that unicorn ventures actively work to balance their startup mission, which allows them to experience high-growth and achieve market disruption, with the financial demands of venture capital investors. This novel conclusion demonstrates the value of using positively deviant outlier cases, such as unicorn ventures, as a viable sample for studying market disruption.

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References

2007Theory Building From Cases: Opportunities And Challenges 2016Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research 2015The Development and Psychometric Properties of LIWC2015 2017The lineages of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach 2004Reliability in Content Analysis: Some Common Misconceptions and Recommendations 2013Research Commentary —Too Big to Fail: Large Samples and the p -Value Problem 2004Complementary and Supplementary Fit: A Theoretical and Empirical Integration.2011Legitimate Distinctiveness and The Entrepreneurial Identity: Influence on Investor Judgments of New Venture Plausibility

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