Hype, or the collective vision of a promising future, is both an opportunity and a risk for emerging ventures, technologies, and industries. While it mobilizes resources, public interest, and institutional support, the inevitable decline of hype—into the "trough of disillusionment"—often leads to resource withdrawal, venture failures, and stalled industry growth. Focusing on the UK's ocean energy industry, particularly wave and tidal technologies, from 2000 to 2024, we identify three distinct phases: 1) peak hype around wave technology (2000–2011), 2) disillusionment and venture collapse (2012–2017), and 3) a resurgence driven by tidal technology (2018–2024). Our findings reveal that ventures initially benefit from associating with hyped sectors but later may dissociate to avoid negative consequences. We develop a theoretical framework explaining how entrepreneurial identification with different market categories can foster resilience during hype cycles, offering practical strategies for entrepreneurs to leverage hype while mitigating its risks. This research contributes to understanding the evolution of nascent industries through cycles of excitement and skepticism.

Ventures founded by women (versus men) face significant funding disparities, largely due to gender bias. Research suggests that this penalty may be mitigated in stereotypically feminine industries, where women are perceived as having more expertise. However, I argue that under certain conditions, this perceived expertise may paradoxically be associated with further penalization. When founders address social issues pertinent to their own disadvantaged group—a situation I refer to as identity-issue fit—investors may attribute ideological rather than economic motives to ventures, leading to concerns about the prioritization of societal over financial goals. Consequently, ventures founded by entrepreneurs with (versus without) identity-issue fit are likely to raise less capital than similar ventures. Consistent with my core argument, I further theorize that penalization intensifies when entrepreneurs engage in advocacy, and diminishes when the addressed issue gains public salience. I test these hypotheses using data from 2010-2024 on venture-backed Femtech companies in the U.S., the UK, and Canada focused on women’s health issues. The findings support my predictions and align with the proposed mechanism. This paper contributes to our understanding of the barriers faced by founders from disadvantaged groups and introduces a new mechanism through which ideology may influence key audiences’ evaluations of organizations.

We investigate the effects of communication framing on necessity entrepreneurs’ participation in corporate-sponsored training programs. Necessity entrepreneurs (who start businesses for sustenance amidst a lack of alternative employment opportunities) play a critical role in alleviating poverty and fostering regional economic growth, especially in emerging economies. Companies often offer training programs to support these entrepreneurs as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. However, these programs frequently suffer from low participation, thus diminishing their potential to help the intended beneficiaries. Utilizing regulatory focus theory, we investigate whether promotion-framed messages (emphasizing growth and advancement) or prevention-framed messages (emphasizing security and safety) are more effective in encouraging participation. We conduct two randomized field experiments embedded in corporate-sponsored entrepreneurial training programs involving 5,773 necessity entrepreneurs in Peru. We find that promotion-framed messages lead to higher participation rates than prevention-framed messages. Our study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how communication framing affects necessity entrepreneurs’ engagement with training programs. We also extend the CSR literature by showing that communication nudges based on regulatory focus can enhance beneficiary engagement. Additionally, our findings have practical implications for organizations designing training programs aimed at empowering necessity entrepreneurs.