11399: The Role of Empathic Understanding in Cofounder Relationships (session 26109)

Assuming that productive working relationships within founding teams are critical to the success of new ventures, we explore the effect of empathic understanding among cofounders on their relationship satisfaction. Drawing from empathy literature on romantic couples, we measure the situational empathy expressed between cofounders—as opposed to dispositional empathy—to test our hypotheses. Dyadic analysis of 21 cofounder pairs (N=42) reveals that empathic understanding of entrepreneurs positively relates to their relationship satisfaction. This relationship was partially and negatively mediated by relationship conflict. We offer a contrarian view that excess empathy can be a strength in the cofounder relationship, which runs against the “too much of a good thing” argument currently gathering momentum in the management and entrepreneurship literature on dispositional empathy. The implications of our results for research on startup teams and entrepreneurial empathy are discussed in detail.

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