The hubris tradition of research has been criticized for limiting its scope by associating hubris predominantly with detrimental leadership behaviours. To counteract this bias, we provide a more nuanced exploration of hubris and consider both beneficial and detrimental manifestations of hubris in start‐up founders’ leadership behaviours. Our analysis, based on qualitative data from expert interviews and two case studies, indicates that, whilst hubristic start‐up founders are likely to fail overall, they also excel in creating and communicating visionary scenarios, steering employees through critical situations, and extracting commitment from third parties. These under‐researched ‘bright’ manifestations of hubris allow start‐up founders to lead their venture towards a stage, in which their visionary power and resilience become crucial prerequisites for economic progress. Our findings extend knowledge on hubristic leadership, offer new directions for the hubris tradition of research, and open up avenues for future research with a more balanced view of hubris.

This study explores which networks are beneficial for gaining resources for firms' internationalization. Little is known about firms' use of organizational, personal, and intermediary networks to gain access to resources for internationalization. Firms are seeking resources through their organization's relationships (organizational networks) and individuals' personal contacts (personal networks). Governmental and industry actors are implementing networks to promote international growth and act as an intermediary between business actors (intermediary networks). We conduct in‐depth interviews with firms and representatives for intermediary networks complemented with a survey. The findings reveal which resources are accessed through the different networks. We find organizational networks provide considerable access to most resources (except financial resources) that are beneficial for internationalization, whereas intermediary networks provide access to reputational, human, and market resources. Personal networks primarily provide access to human resources. This study contributes to theory by giving a more fine‐grained understanding of how different types of networks give access to different resources valuable for internationalization.

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Reward-based crowdfunding broadens the scope of e-commerce transactions, as prototypical products are pre-sold under conditions of considerable uncertainty. To date, we know little about the mechanisms that underlie decisions to back reward-based crowdfunding campaigns. However, it is likely that startup founders’ possibility of showcasing their personalities in video pitches signals their trustworthiness, particularly, as other features, such as quality seals and customer testimonials, are often unavailable. We use signaling theory to reinforce the move from a feature-oriented perspective to a signaling perspective, as signals can transmit information about startup founders’ otherwise imperceptible qualities and abilities. Based on a survey (N = 108), we investigate how perceived hubris – proven to be particularly salient in startup contexts – influences the funding decision of potential backers. We find that abilities and legitimacy of a startup founder are rated positively when s/he is perceived as hubristic. These results have implications for crowdfunding campaigns and highlight the relevance of personality traits in electronic markets.

Startup founders often display personality traits associated with charisma and hubris. Existing literature contains rich evidence on the relevance of these traits for traditional investments settings that involve a personal interaction between the entrepreneur and the investor. However, the state of theory development on how hubris and charisma also influence the outcomes of raising seed funding online from non-professional investors can still be considered as nascent as a result of missing empirical evidence. We draw upon dual-process theory and argue that hubris and charisma are of particular relevance as they trigger intuitive decision-making processes of non-traditional investors. Our empirical setting involves a true experiment based on three versions of a crowdfunding pitch video that was recorded in collaboration with a professional actor. The primary outcomes suggest that both hubristic and charismatic entrepreneurs are more successful in sourcing capital from the crowd as they are perceived as more trustworthy and passionate.