Few facets of business venturing are more challenging to capture than nascent-stage venture creation. The principal reason for this is the inherent difficulty scholars face when addressing the dynamic interplay between individuals and opportunities. Post hoc perspectives of venture creation typically involve high “narrativity,” characterized by structured, linear, teleological sense-making that tends to omit unreasoned and unintended facets of entrepreneurship. While narrativity is indispensable to new venture storytelling, it is also the quintessence of post hoc reality restructuring, which often excludes and invariably mutates key aspects of entrepreneurial action. To mitigate the data narrativity problem, we formulate a historiographical procedure designed to (a) reveal the internal and external stimuli that govern venture creation and (b) elicit deeper understanding of the unreasoned logics that also guide entrepreneurial action. For practical benefit, we assess this procedure through the lens of four archetypal research contexts, each featuring start-ups as “sites” of historiographical analysis: “wastelands,” “ruins,” “construction sites,” and “goldmines.” Our methodological roadmap enables a richer depiction of nascent-stage venturing.

企业风险投资的几个方面比新生阶段的风险投资更具挑战性。其主要原因是学者在解决个人与机会之间的动态相互作用时面临的固有困难。创业创造的事后观点通常涉及高度的“叙事性”，其特点是结构化、线性、目的论的意义建构，往往会忽略创业的不合理和无意的方面。虽然叙事对于新的创业故事讲述是必不可少的，但它也是事后现实重构的精髓，它经常排除并总是改变创业行动的关键方面。为了缓解数据叙述性问题，我们制定了一个历史学程序，旨在 (a) 揭示内部和外部刺激管理企业创建和 (b) 引发对指导创业行动的不合理逻辑的更深入理解。为了实际利益，我们通过四个原型研究背景的镜头来评估这一过程，每一个都将初创企业作为史学分析的“地点”：“荒地”、“废墟”、“建筑工地”和“金矿”。我们的方法路线图能够更丰富地描述新生阶段的风险投资。