Founder’s prior experience has been considered crucial for growth and success of venture firms. Despite the extant research on entrepreneurial experience, little is known about how entrepreneurs’ prior experiences are imprinted on them and the differences in knowledge these experiences shape. Based on the theories of entrepreneurial learning and effectuation-causation, this article investigates the influence of entrepreneurs’ prior firm founding and industry work experience. We tested hypotheses regarding the impact of these two types of entrepreneurial experience on the perception of long-term growth expectations and competitiveness of venture firms they found. The analysis was conducted on 1,610 newly founded venture firms in Korea surveyed over a four-year period from 2014 to 2017, and the ordered logit model was employed. The results show that prior firm founding experience results in positive long-term growth expectation. On the other hand, prior industry work experience has a positive effect only on organisation management competitiveness and has no statistically significant effect on technology competitiveness. This study extends the discussions of existing literature by focusing on the impact of founders’ prior experience on perceptions of their venture firms. Different role of entrepreneurial experiences can be explained by the different nature of the knowledge that is formed.
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