Beyond Trust: Exploring Founders' Perceptions of Trust and Distrust in Start-Ups

Abstract

Aim: This article explores how start-up founders perceive distrust in relation to trust and examines whether distrust is understood solely as the absence of trust or as a distinct mechanism supporting entrepreneurial decision-making under conditions of uncertainty.

Methodology: A pilot mixed-methods study was conducted with 31 founders of Polish start-ups across different industries. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify perceived benefits and risks of trust and distrust. An exploratory cluster analysis (k-means) was subsequently applied to identify founders' perception profiles.

Results: The findings indicated that founders clearly distinguished trust from distrust. While trust was primarily associated with cooperation, commitment and organisational development, distrust was perceived as supporting verification, critical evaluation, caution and risk management. Three founder profiles were identified. The most notable finding is that the profiles differed considerably in how the founders understood and valued trust, whereas their perceptions of distrust remained comparatively consistent across all groups. These results suggest that distrust serves functions that complement, rather than oppose, trust in entrepreneurial settings.

Implications and recommendations: As a pilot study based on a relatively small sample, the findings should be interpreted with caution. Future research should examine trust and distrust in larger and more diverse samples and investigate how these perceptions evolve as ventures develop. The findings suggest that founders should manage trust and distrust as complementary relational mechanisms. While trust facilitates cooperation and commitment, an appropriate level of distrust may support more effective verification, critical evaluationa and decision-making under uncertainty.

Originality/value: This article contributes to the entrepreneurship and trust literature by demonstrating that founders conceptualise distrust as a distinct relational mechanism rather than merely low trust. It also provides exploratory evidence that founders' perceptions of distrust are comparatively more homogeneous across the identified profiles than their perceptions of trust.