FORTHCOMING IN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

This paper examines the process of how entrepreneurs assemble resources. In the model, the entrepreneurs challenge is to convince two complementary resource providers to commit their resources to a new venture. Before com-mitting their resources, one of them needs to perform a costly evaluation. The entrepreneur has a problem with getting su ¢ cient attention, since each provider has an incentive to wait and free-ride on the others evaluation. For some para-meters the entrepreneur solicits both partners with equal intensity (knocking on every door); for others, the entrepreneur always solicits the same partner (pestering). For many but not all parameter ranges, the process of assem-bling resources takes too much time relative to what is socially e ¢ cient. The model thus explores what factors facilitate or hinder the creation of new \u85rms