‘No Better Fund Without Me!’ Do Narcissistic Start-up Entrepreneurs Succeed in Venture Funding?

Abstract

Unlike other narcissism research, this research uses a narcissism personality inventory (NPI) to capture the effect of startup entrepreneur’s narcissism in determining resource acquisition. Using Indonesian startup founders as the sample, the results demonstrate a positive association between narcissism and funding success, indicating that highly narcissistic startup entrepreneurs have a higher probability of success in their funding acquisition. The findings of this study are different from existing findings of the literature on narcissistic entrepreneurs that use unobtrusive measures and they support the upper-echelon theory. This research practically implies that a grandiose entrepreneur might be bad for the working environment but good for resource acquisition.