From strong ties to no ties: configurations for first-customer acquisition in tech startups
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Denoo, Lien
Soh, Pek Hooi
Clarysse, Bart
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Attracting customers is one of the most important milestones for technology ventures. Ties are generally considered as beneficial when attracting start-up resources, such as first customers, because they can mitigate information asymmetry to overcome liabilities of newness and smallness. Despite this, when and how entrepreneurs use different network approaches to attract their ventures' first paying customers remains understudied. We rely on the concept of tie strength to distinguish between ventures acquiring customers via pre-existing strong ties, weak ties, or no ties (i.e., through market-based mechanisms). Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on 72 entrepreneurs from 72 Flemish technology ventures, complemented by extensive qualitative data, we identify distinct, equifinal configurations of founder, firm, and environmental attributes that are associated with acquiring customers through strong, weak, or no ties. Our post-hoc performance analyses further reveal performance differences: while attracting customers through no ties is associated with higher revenues, only using strong ties to attract first paying customers is associated with higher survival at scale. Our findings have important practical implications for entrepreneurs and technology commercialization policies. Overall, our study contributes a network-based perspective to customer acquisition to the literatures on entrepreneurial resource acquisition, entrepreneurial marketing and technology entrepreneurship.
Date Issued
2026-03-01
Date Acceptance
2025-12-16
Citation
Journal of Business Venturing, 2026, 41 (2)
ISSN
0883-9026
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Business Venturing
Volume
41
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
106570
Date Publish Online
2025-12-30