Entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in bringing new technologies to market by identifying opportunities, often drawing on their prior knowledge. While extensive research has examined how entrepreneurs’ prior knowledge influences the quantity and variety of opportunities identified, relatively little is known about how such knowledge impacts the novelty of identified opportunities. This paper focuses on founding teams and explores how their within-industry experience influences the likelihood of identifying novel technological uses. Building on the organizational search perspective, I argue that the within-industry experience of core founders—those who conceive the initial idea and lead the early founding efforts—negatively affects the identification of novel opportunities, whereas the within-industry experience of late-joining founders—those attracted by core founders to join the founding team—positively influences the likelihood of identifying novel opportunities. The hypotheses are tested through analyzing startups commercializing artificial intelligence in the U.S. medical device industry.
