Supply chains are a critical resource for achieving growth targets of new ventures. Despite this importance, the strategies ventures use to evolve and scale their supply chains in nascent industries have received relatively little attention. This in-depth multiple case study explores how six new ventures develop their supply chains in the emerging plant-based meat industry. Our results demonstrate how supply chains and the entrepreneurial scaling process co-evolve, which is reflected in three characteristic features: the difficulty of managing demand in power-asymmetric relationships, ambidextrous tensions and the multifaceted role of supply chain management. Beyond these commonalities, our analysis identifies three distinct supply chain scaling modes adopted by new ventures: vertical scaling, horizontal scaling, and replication scaling. While growth aspirations drive entrepreneurial engagement in these relationships, they are not the only motivating factor. As both the firm and industry co-evolve, new ventures dynamically adjust their supply chain design to limit supply dependencies, improve core capabilities and minimize distribution cost. Our results offer growth-seeking entrepreneurs a portfolio of actionable supply chain strategies. The findings of our study also contribute to the relatively under-researched intersection of supply chain management and entrepreneurship.
