Drawing on rich ethnographic data we present a narrative and visual account of the way in which a nascent start-up team (pseudonym, ‘Co-lab’) collectively constructs meaning as a ‘purpose-driven’ start-up during the new venture creation (NVC) process. Focusing on the very earliest stages of NVC, often referred to as the ‘black-box’ of entrepreneurship studies, we evidence and explore the critical moments through which Co-lab navigate their way from individual ideas and ideals towards a collective understanding of their purpose. We highlight how disparate individual founder and team member positions are, first, explicated, collectively deconstructed and then collectively reconstructed by members of the founding team as they prepare to launch their company/product on the market and their collective understanding of their meaning as a purpose-driven start-up can be objectified into strategy and vision documentation. The paper makes a contribution to the emerging field of purpose-driven business. Specifically, we demonstrate the central importance of the process of challenge to dominant profit-centered norms in creating space for meaning as a purpose-driven start-up to be collectively constructed during NVC. We then introduce a novel data-derived (EDRO) model which explains the process through which founders collectively construct meaning as a purpose-driven start-up.
