Hype is a collective vision and promise of a possible future, around which
attention, excitement, and expectations increase over time. Within
nascent markets, hype can thus serve as a cultural resource by which
entrepreneurs might encourage greater early stakeholder support and
resources. And yet as hype-driven support couples with mounting
temporal and categorical expectations, this can also limit ventures’
flexibility during the entrepreneurial process. Drawing on an inductive,
longitudinal, and comparative study of three new ventures within the
much-hyped nascent market of impact investing, we develop an
emergent theory of hype management, illustrating the field organizing
practices that give rise to different forms of social proof, thereby
allowing new ventures sufficient flexibility to convert hype into a
sustained entrepreneurial opportunity. Our account contributes directly
to contemporary public conversations of hype by revealing how
entrepreneurs might engage with and indeed live up to the hype
surrounding nascent markets without succumbing to the deceit and
disappointment typically associated with hype. Beyond this, our findings
extend existing scholarship on entrepreneurship within nascent markets,
the sociology of expectations, and the realization of distant futures