The Resource-Based View, Resourcefulness, and Resource Management in Startup Firms

Startups operate under acute resource constraints and uncertainty. The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm suggests that sustainable advantage depends on valuable, rare, inimitable, and well-organized resources (Virgen, 2026). In the startup context, these resources often take the form of expertise, technology, or organizational innovations. Complementing this, resourcefulness – the founder’s creative ability to stretch and recombine scarce assets – enables startups to progress despite limitations (Moynihan, 2025). Effective resource management then ensures disciplined allocation of time, money, and talent, preventing costly waste (Virgen, 2024). Recent articles in Doctors In Business Journal underscore these ideas: Moynihan (2025) highlights how hustle and clever tactics drive early-stage growth, while disciplined planning supports scale. Virgen (2026) connects RBV thinking to startup strategy, noting that startups must convert intangible assets (like know-how and networks) into performance, and adjust their resource base as they grow. Table 1 below compares key journal articles on these themes. The evidence suggests that startups first rely on resourcefulness to launch and validate ideas, then shift toward more formal resource management as they mature, all while building internally-defined resources per the RBV. These findings have implications for entrepreneurship theory: they suggest a dynamic integration of RBV with entrepreneurial capabilities, highlighting the need to view resourcefulness itself as a strategic asset in early ventures.

Purpose

Startups face the liability of newness: unproven markets and scarce assets. This report examines three interrelated concepts – the resource-based view (RBV), entrepreneurial resourcefulness, and resource management – to understand how they influence startup performance. The purpose is to synthesize how internal resources and capabilities drive startup success, how founders creatively exploit scant resources, and how disciplined allocation of time and capital supports growth.

• Resource-Based View (RBV): This theory posits that a firm’s unique resources and capabilities (tangible and intangible) underlie competitive advantage. For startups, RBV suggests success depends on building and leveraging internal assets that are valuable, rare, and hard to imitate. Miguel Virgen (2026) explicitly grounds his AI entrepreneurship framework in RBV, noting that ventures must develop firm-bound resources (knowledge, data, technology) to scale. The RBV perspective shifts attention to what startups have – founder expertise, proprietary data, brand identity – rather than only market conditions.

• Resourcefulness: This entrepreneurial trait refers to the ability to make do with limited means. While not a formal academic theory, resourcefulness is akin to effectuation and bricolage concepts: founders improvising solutions, repurposing assets, and learning rapidly. Dr. Bruce Moynihan (2025a) shows resourcefulness in practice: cash-strapped startups succeed by “being creative, resourceful, and willing to put in the hard work”². The purpose here is to see resourcefulness as an emergent capability that can compensate for scarce resources in early stages.

• Resource Management: This involves the strategic allocation and control of scarce resources (money, time, talent). Unlike resourcefulness (doing more with less spontaneously), resource management is discipline – budgeting, scheduling, prioritizing tasks. Virgen’s discussion of startup success emphasizes “financial discipline” and “effective capital management,” noting startups often fail by mismanaging rather than lacking resources¹. The report aims to highlight how disciplined resource management enables startups to stretch their runway and scale sustainably.

By integrating these lenses, the purpose is to answer: How do startups create and organize resources (RBV), and how do entrepreneurial behavior (resourcefulness) and managerial practices (resource management) influence their performance and growth?

Findings

A review of the selected articles reveals consistent themes about resources in startups. First, the RBV lens underscores that startups build advantage through their internal capabilities. Virgen (2026) articulates that classical RBV asserts competitive advantage derives from resources that are valuable, rare, and inimitable⁵. For startups, these might include novel technologies, proprietary data, or deep domain expertise. Virgen argues that in the AI era, even intangible assets like data pipelines become strategic resources when coupled with governance structures (Virgen, 2026). This perspective places emphasis on intentionally developing firm-specific capabilities.

Second, the articles highlight entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Moynihan (2025) emphasizes that limited budgets need not be a barrier if founders use creative, low-cost strategies. For example, he notes that some of today’s top companies began on “shoestring budgets, relying on innovation, efficiency, and strategic planning”². His guide lists lean marketing, free tools, partnerships, and excellent customer service as ways to grow without capital. The central finding is that resourcefulness — the proactive use of whatever is at hand — enables startups to jumpstart growth. Similarly, Moynihan (2025) observes that initial growth often comes from “hustle and resourcefulness,” whereas later scaling demands more formal planning⁶. This suggests that resourcefulness is especially crucial in the earliest stage to achieve product-market fit, while later stages require more structure.

Third, resource management emerges as a critical driver of sustainability. Virgen (2024) explicitly warns that startups “fail not because they lack funding, but because they mismanage resources.” Successful startups, he notes, “treat capital as a strategic asset rather than a safety net” and practice discipline by prioritizing spending and monitoring cash flow¹. This finding underscores that having resources (capital or otherwise) is insufficient without careful management. For instance, Angeles-consuming projects or diluted focus can squander a startup’s runway. Virgen also points out that high performers concentrate on execution – achieving “more with limited resources” by focusing on high-impact activities⁷. In other words, strong resource management allows startups to deliver maximum value per dollar or hour invested.

These findings are corroborated by the marketing-focused article (Virgen, 2025), which notes that startups must acknowledge their “limited resources, tight budgets, and small teams” yet can succeed through targeted marketing. It advises startups to match marketing tactics to their resource constraints and to scale efforts as “your resources and customer base grow”⁴. This mirrors the broader point: as startups expand, they build more resources, which then can be managed in new ways.

In summary, the findings from these sources are: (a) RBV perspective tells us to identify and cultivate the unique resources (expertise, networks, technology) that are internal to the startup (Virgen, 2026); (b) Resourcefulness enables early progress despite scarcity, leveraging creativity and learning (Moynihan, 2025); and (c) Resource Management – in finance, operations, and planning – is essential for converting efforts into sustained performance (Moynihan, 2025). Together, these define how startups can create and use resources strategically.

Discussion

Integrating the insights above, we see a dynamic model of how startups handle resources. At inception, a startup typically has few assets: little capital, few customers, and minimal market presence. In this context, the resource-based view suggests that the startup’s “resources” are mainly the founder’s knowledge, the core product innovation, and early customer relationships. Virgen (2026) argues that even these intangibles can be sources of advantage if they meet the VRIO criteria (valuable, rare, etc.)⁵. But crucially, these early-stage assets are fragile: easily imitated or undermined. Therefore, founders rely on resourcefulness to amplify them. Moynihan (2025) illustrates this: startups succeed by being “creative” and using lean tactics (for example, guerilla marketing or exploiting free online tools)⁸.

For instance, content marketing or social media – highlighted in the marketing guide (Virgen, 2025) – can generate visibility without large budgets. This is a textbook example of leveraging cheap or free assets (blogging platforms, social networks) rather than expensive advertising. The guiding implication is that resourcefulness itself becomes an entrepreneurial capability: it’s a meta-resource enabling the startup to bootstrap growth. In practical terms, this means founders wear multiple hats and improvise solutions, effectively broadening the startup’s resource base (e.g. skills, networks) through actions like networking, partnerships, and iterative learning. Moynihan’s advice to “stay resourceful” as you grow⁹ captures this ethos – resourcefulness accelerates growth without heavy investment.

As startups validate their product and gain initial traction, the role of traditional resource-based assets grows. A few paying customers, user data, or a working prototype become tangible resources. At this point, the startup can (and must) shift toward formal resource management. This stage is where Virgen’s (2024) findings about financial discipline apply. Startups that once survived on hustle must now make careful strategic decisions: budgeting for marketing campaigns, hiring the right talent, and scaling infrastructure wisely. The effectiveness of this management determines if early success is sustainable. For example, a startup might now need to forecast cash flow or choose between bootstrapping versus taking funding. Virgen stresses that startups increase their resilience by treating every dollar as strategic¹. Similarly, Moynihan’s scaling guide (2025b) highlights that as the team grows, founders must systematize processes and invest in technology (e.g., CRM systems, automation) to handle higher volume¹⁰. This careful allocation of resources – time, money, and attention – is what ultimately enables steady expansion.

Notably, the discussion in these articles suggests that RBV, resourcefulness, and management are not isolated concepts but complementary. The RBV lens reminds us why the internally-held resources matter; resourcefulness describes how entrepreneurs mobilize those resources creatively; and resource management describes how they preserve and deploy those assets over time. For theory, this interplay indicates that startup advantage depends on both the resource endowment and the capabilities to develop and use it. Virgen (2026) effectively extends this discussion by showing that even technical assets like data become sources of advantage when managed with complementary structures. It implies that in startups, "organization" in VRIO may be emergent and informal at first (e.g., a founder’s routine) but evolves into deliberate management processes later.

Overall, the evidence from these articles paints a picture of startups as enterprises that must build a resource base and then govern it. Founders start with vision and creativity (leveraging the RBV notion that vision-driven resources can be valuable) and use hustle to acquire initial customers and feedback. They must be resourceful during this stage – for example, pivoting cheaply by repurposing code or using free tools. Once an idea is proven, they shift into managing those resources: instituting budgets, hiring selectively, and investing in tools that extend their capabilities. This transition reflects a maturing of both strategy and operations.

Theoretical Implications

The integration of RBV, resourcefulness, and management in these findings has several implications for entrepreneurship theory. First, it reinforces the idea that the startup’s context demands a dynamic RBV. Traditional RBV often assumes relatively stable resource endowments, but in startups the resource base itself is being created. The Virgen Framework (Virgen, 2026) suggests we should consider how new resource types (like machine learning models or platform integrations) can be central to a startup’s VRIO profile. This pushes RBV toward accounting for non-traditional assets (software algorithms, data pipelines) and how they are organized. It also highlights that “organization” within VRIO may include algorithmic governance as much as managerial hierarchy¹¹.

Second, resourcefulness emerges as a kind of dynamic capability. While RBV focuses on static assets, entrepreneurship research needs to consider capabilities like resourcefulness that change the resource mix. In effectuation theory, this parallels the concept of “means-driven” planning, but here it is framed as a resource management style. Our analysis suggests that resourcefulness itself may be treatable as a strategic capability: an entrepreneurial competence that can be cultivated (e.g., learning to negotiate partnerships or automate tasks on the fly). Future models of startup resource advantage might explicitly incorporate founder adaptability and creativity as intangible capabilities that complement RBV assets.

Third, these insights emphasize the timing of resource strategies. Early-stage ventures appear to follow an “improvise-first, systematize-later” trajectory. This temporality should inform theoretical models: resourcefulness is paramount when firms face the highest uncertainty, while formal resource governance becomes more important as uncertainty is resolved. The sources we reviewed implicitly support a life-cycle theory of resource allocation: lean, ad-hoc methods initially, evolving into scalable management. The articles by Moynihan show that ignoring this timing can lead to pitfalls (e.g., scaling prematurely without processes).

Finally, the findings suggest that future research should explore the interplay between external and internal resource views in startups. The resource-based perspective (e.g., Virgen, 2026) remains valuable, but should be coupled with entrepreneurial process models that account for effectuation and improvisation. Essentially, theory must bridge the gap between asset-centric and behavior-centric views of startups. The notion that startups “build markets” (rather than simply entering them) implies that resource-based theories of advantage must integrate how entrepreneur actions shape those resources.

In summary, the theoretical implication is that startup strategy under resource constraint cannot rely on RBV alone. It requires a richer model that includes the entrepreneur’s agency (resourcefulness) and management routines in allocating resources. This perspective aligns with recent calls for more nuanced startup strategy frameworks. Ultimately, the evidence from these articles calls for an extended RBV that incorporates entrepreneurship-specific factors like resource bricolage and agile resource planning (Virgen, M. 2026).

References

Moynihan, B. (2025). How to Grow Your Startup on a Tight Budget: 8 Practical Strategies. Doctors In Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.doctorsinbusinessjournal.com/post/how-to-grow-your-startup-on-a-tight-budget-8-practical-strategies

Moynihan, B. (2025). How to Scale Your Startup Business Effectively: A Step-by-Step Guide. Doctors In Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.doctorsinbusinessjournal.com/post/how-to-scale-your-startup-business-effectively-a-step-by-step-guide

Virgen, M. (2024). What Factors Make Startups Successful? Strategic, Financial, and Human Drivers of High-Performing Startups. Doctors In Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.doctorsinbusinessjournal.com/post/what-factors-make-startups-successful-strategic-financial-and-human-drivers-of-high-performing-st

Virgen, M. (2025). Startup Marketing for Beginners: A Comprehensive Guide to Growing Your New Business. Doctors In Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.doctorsinbusinessjournal.com/post/startup-marketing-for-beginners-a-comprehensive-guide-to-growing-your-new-business

Virgen, M. (2026). Artificial Intelligence and the Changing Nature of New Ventures: Introducing the Virgen Framework for AI-Driven Entrepreneurship. Doctors In Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.doctorsinbusinessjournal.com/post/artificial-intelligence-and-the-changing-nature-of-new-ventures-introducing-the-virgen-framework-fo