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Understanding how entrepreneurial teams are formed has been the focus of a broad scholarly discussion. This study contributes to the stream of literature on entrepreneurial team formation by analysing data on 21 407 university students willing to have a career as entrepreneurs within a team. Multinomial regression analyses are used to test effects of family cohesion and family capital (i.e., human, social and financial capital) on the propensity of potential entrepreneurs to include team members from their family. Our hypotheses are based on the assumption that the family is likely to affect entrepreneurial team formation, as it conditions both relational and instrumental motives for team member selection. Relying on family embeddedness and resource-based view perspectives, the chapter considers advantages and disadvantages entailed in the choice of team members from the family rather than other personal networks. The empirical analyses show the positive effect of family cohesion and family capital on the decision to form a family entrepreneurial team rather than an entrepreneurial team without family members. Moreover, there is a positive effect of availability of family-provided human and social capital on the decision to form a team with only family members rather than a mixed team of family and non-family members. Implications for theory and practice are discussed with regard to family cohesion and family capital, family entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial team formation.

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