THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL AND ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITY FOR THE NEW VENTURE PERFORMANCE IN THE START-UP STAGE

The creation of new ventures has always been viewed as a stimulus for the development of economics. However, it is always difficult for entrepreneurs to get the investment during the start-up stage since the risk is much more than the others, and also the entrepreneurial performance is hard to evaluate. In recent years, the impact of social capital for the entrepreneurial performance has been a key concern based on the theory of social network. However, there are still no unified conclusion about that. In this study, we describe the start-up stage as the process of identifying, evaluating and exploring the entrepreneurial opportunity, and the new venture performance will be affected by both the internal and external social capital during the process. This research reported in this study has two primary objectives : (1) To propose a comprehensive theoretical model of linkage by drawing on insights from complementary streams of research, and (2) To empirically test the core of the model (7 hypotheses). At the heart of the new model is the assertion that for the social capital has a positive impact on the entrepreneurial performance, and the social capital developed by the entrepreneurial team must be a good fit to the venture opportunity it related with.