Love at First Sight or Arranged Marriage? Efficient Relation Persistence in New Venture Mentoring

Mentoring relations are essential for new venture performance, but the strategies by which entrepreneurs and mentors act together to sustain their relationships remain unexplored. In this mixed method study, we propose a systematic, configurational, and dyadic view of efficient relationship persistence and clarify its importance for superior acceleration outcomes. Building on fieldwork in 35 mentoring dyads within an acceleration program, we identify two key strategies, process-embedded and attraction-driven, and offer four equifinal paths for how entrepreneurs and mentors persist in efficient relations. The findings thus ascertain the role of economic rents and prior mutual attraction between the partners and uncover the more important but neglected role of the mentoring process in shaping these strategies. Overall, we add insights to the social exchange, new venture mentoring, and acceleration literatures on how joint action, especially in environments marked by high stakes and high uncertainty, shapes critical relationship outcomes.