Founders "Just Want to Have Fun": Substance Abuse and Entrepreneurship Addiction

We examine substance addiction as a core antecedent in the development of entrepreneurship addiction, which is the compulsive need to engage in entrepreneurship. We draw on psychological addiction literature to expand beyond solely looking at entrepreneurship addiction through the lens of behavioural addictions, such as gaming or internet use, to focus on the neurobiological underpinnings shared by all addictions, behavioural and substance alike. Through the use of a mixed- method approach, we team both epidemiological data from more than 48,833 founders from 2005-2014, with qualitative case study data from four founders with a history of addiction. We demonstrate how the shared neurobiological underpinnings of addiction make founders with a history of all addictions more likely to become serial entrepreneurs, and consequently entrepreneurship addicts, and how the cycle of entrepreneurship addiction plays out for founders with concomitant addictions. Our theorizing offers insights into a potentially at risk group of founders, and aims to identify the potential neurobiological mechanisms at play in making this group predisposed to this dark-side of entrepreneurship.