Built-in: How entrepreneurs use their personal brands to build cognitive social capital to foster the venture growth

At the beginning of their journeys, new ventures are confronted with owner-centricity. In this phase the entrepreneur’s personal brand overlaps with the still-developing brand of the new business entity. As such, building a strong personal brand represents a strategic asset to overcome both the liability of newness and the liability of smallness to attain the legitimacy needed to attract people and money. Indeed, being well suited to communicate identities, personal brands are a strategic means for the founder to stand out from the crowd and accumulate social capital to acquire resources. Yet, despite the relevance of the topic, there is a paucity of research. With the aim of addressing how the personal brand of an entrepreneur could be leveraged to facilitate the formation of cognitive social capital, that is, a shared view of the world needed to ease the exchange of resources, the study adopted a multiple-case study approach investigated through a semiotic method. Findings suggest entrepreneurs foster a shared understanding of the world with their audience through their personal brands leveraged as a cognitive device by developing a narrative that resonates with them. Implications for the community of practice are provided with a range of future research opportunities.