Do First-Mover Advantages Really Matter for Internet Ventures in Emerging Markets? A Study of Localization and Platform Envelopment Capabilities on New Venture Growth

In the past decades, first mover advantages have been discussed widely as one of the critical success factors of venture performance. However, recent phenomena in emerging markets such as Indonesia show that late entrants in the Internet venture sector have better performance compared to the pioneers. The late entrants' Internet ventures start with not only a single service, but also multi-bundled complementary services. Therefore, the platform envelopment phenomenon, an entry path effort that utilizes existing competitor platform network effects, is happening. The platform envelopment, as well as localization activities, is widely seen in successful Internet ventures. Our research proposal aims to explore how these capabilities can help late entrants in Internet ventures achieve better growth rates than the pioneers. Furthermore, we also explore the organizational theory approach that discusses the role of new venture team prior experience and entrepreneurs' social networks, especially business resources networks, as the factors that help in the development of platform envelopment capabilities.