Discussion on Venture Capital Teams, Competitive Landscape for Startups, and Creating Successful Business Models
- Miguel Virgen, PhD Student in Business
- Jul 11, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 25
The involvement of venture capital institutions (VCs) in the development of startups is crucial for the growth and success of startups. In addition to providing critical financial support to their investee startups, VCs actively play a professional role in helping these companies establish closer ties with various parties including upstream and downstream business partners and consumers (Fu, H. et al., 2024). When it comes to reviewing the venture capital team from a doctoral perspective, it can be important to make sure that we analyze both the individual competencies and the collective dynamics that drive investment decisions within a venture capital team.
Venture Capitalists should closely monitor the evolution and progression of their organization networks over time. They should tailor their collaboration timelines to align with their specific performance objectives (Buchner, A. et al., 2025). A venture capital team can be made up of partners, associates, analysts, and advisors. Partners can be industry experts with plenty of business acumen that are in charge of the ventures strategy and performance. Associates and analysts usually work on conducting market research and financial modeling. Although venture capital teams make up a venture firm, not all team members are involved in the investing decisions of the firms, but they all play a crucial role in assisting and guiding in the decision making process and the annual performance of the firm.
From a Ph.D. student’s perspective, one can model the decision making process of a venture capital team where there are multiple functional areas that all take place before a final decision is made. For example, the anchoring bias may result in early stage valuations to skew toward the founders’ optimistic projections, while confirmation bias can result in the team to overweight data that supports a preferred narrative. In order to reduce these risks, there would need to be an establish formal investment committee, deployed structured scoring frameworks, and a culture of constructive dissent. Hence, the cohesion and adaptive learning capacity of the venture capital team would prove to be essential in navigating the complexities of early stage investing.
Competitive Landscape
As intra-industry rivalry intensifes globally and market change accelerates, frms are more concerned about long-term survival issues than short-term fnancial performance. To survive longer and prosper, firms often battle with one another through competitive action repertoires, defined as a series of “externally directed, specific competitive moves initiated by a firm to enhance its relative competitive position (Cho, J., 2024). In today's global market, there are now an increase of threats of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers and customers, and the availability of product or service substitutes. All these elements can all shape industry profitability and entry barriers. It also becomes essential for startups to conduct proper market analysis in order to gain insight on what the competitive landscape looks like for their specific industry. Hence, understanding who the competitors are, the total market share available, and possible key suppliers that will affect the competitive edge of ones startup.
With the internet connecting the world and allowing businesses to enter international markets by simply setting up a website, it become even more essential for entrepreneurs to learn about the fast technological changes and regulatory shifts that are occurring in the modern world. For example, in the social media industry, changes in data privacy laws can change the competitive dynamics within a week. Hence, startup ventures should create and implement strategies that balance exploitation of current advantages with exploration of upcoming opportunities. In this way, a well crafted competitive analysis allows for pathway for maintaining a competitive advantage in the market.
Business Model
The business model can be considered as on of the key elements of any venture’s strategy. The business model canvas elements are compromised of customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure. Research has shown that business model innovation is a key leverage for performance Therefore, the questions are: To what extent are companies experimenting with new ways to design their business models? And do companies make full use of the business model innovation space available to them or do they tend to adopt business models with similar features? (Montemari, M. et al., 2022). Business models can be seen as assumptions that need to be confirmed in the real world , as well as a map or guide to stay on track on where the founder plans to take the business. Lean Startup methods, are typically used for fast prototyping of value propositions and pricing with minimum viable products (MVPs). Data such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), and lifetime value (LTV) can be viewed as valuable feedback that can guide business changes and adaptability. Using such data to make changes can be essential because for a business model to remain effective it needs to be a living document that gets updated regularly in order to reflect changing market preferences, competitive pressures, and technological advancements. In short, the business model’s life cycle from ideation through validation to scaling becomes valuable for both academic work and business innovation. Today’s key challenge for firm growth relies in the integration of digital technologies and their use in new business models. Thus, firms increasingly engage in a digital transformation and in digitalizing their business model. Firms can apply digital technologies for improved or novel internal and external processes and integrate them in new business models (Bouncken, R. et al., 2021). By approaching the venture capital team, competitive landscape, and business model through a rigorous, multidisciplinary lens, both founders and students can make the decision processes a lot more clear in order to properly communicate business ideas that can become successful ventures. This academic framing not only deepens our theoretical understanding but also provides actionable insights for practitioners seeking to translate investment capital into sustainable enterprise value.
References:
Fu, H., Qi, H., & An, Y. (2024). When do venture capital and startups team up? Matching matters. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal., 85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102361
Buchner, A., Helbing, P., Mohamed, A., & Yoon, H. D. (2025). Does the same investment team create value? Evidence from venture capital syndication. Small Business Economics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-025-01058-7
Cho, J. (2024). Thriving in the global competitive landscape: competitive dynamics and longevity of emerging market firms. Asian Business & Management, 23(1), 82-109. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41291-023-00250-5
Montemari, M., Taran, Y., Schaper, S., Nielsen, C., Thomsen, P., & Sort, J. (2022). Business model innovation or Business model imitation – That is the question. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 36(3), 393–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2022.2034780
Bouncken, R. B., Kraus, S., & Roig-Tierno Norat. (2021). Knowledge- and innovation-based business models for future growth: digitalized business models and portfolio considerations. Review of Managerial Science, 15(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-019-00366-z
