Entrepreneurial Team Design and Outcomes: Exploring the Influence of Ownership Structure, Team Size, and Gender Composition

• Gender diversity reduces venture team failure. • The gender diversity-venture failure link is moderated by primary owner gender, team size and male equity ownership. • Gender diversity reduces the probability of venture failure when the primary owner is female and team size is large. • Gender diversity reduces venture failure when the primary owner is female and male equity ownership is high. How does gender diversity within a venture team impact venture failure? Bridging two different perspectives on gender diversity––the social categorization view and cognitive models of variation––and based on the gender leadership literature, we investigate the influence of gender diversity on venture failure, as moderated by primary owner gender (i.e., two-way interaction), with team size and ownership structure serving as additional moderators (i.e., three-way interaction). Using panel data from 3,594 venture teams, we found that gender diversity was negatively related to venture failure. In support of our predicted two-way and three-way interaction effects, we also found that primary owner gender (i.e., female) moderated the gender diversity-venture failure relationship, and this moderating effect was further strengthened by team size or male equity ownership. Specifically, gender diversity reduced the probability of venture failure when the primary owner was female and team size was large, or male equity ownership was high.