New venture teams often adjust their composition to account for changing needs. We extend the 3R framework of Relationships-Roles-Rewards to the dynamic setting of team changes by theorizing on performance consequences of team exits while accounting explicitly for the structural dimension of ownership split. Our results show that the adaptation mechanism of founder exit with replacement increases survival for ventures with unequal and equal split. In contrast, exit without replacement is beneficial for equal teams but leaves the survival probability unchanged for unequal teams. Performance differences are due to different logics of initial team composition and subsequently different adaptation requirements as the venture develops.
