This paper investigates how business angels (BAs) embody core identity practices within business angel networks (BANs) and, in doing so, shape Berlin’s entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). Departing from entrepreneur-centric narratives, the study foregrounds early-stage investors as sociocultural actors who participate in and reinforce the ecosystem’s informal institutions. Drawing on entrepreneurial ecosystem theory, organizational culture, and social identity theory (SIT), the paper explores how norms, values, and group affiliations influence investment behavior. Here, SIT offers a valuable psychological lens to understand how group membership shapes perceptions, behaviors, and decision-making by aligning individual self-concept with collective norms and values. Through six qualitative interviews with BAs and BAN representatives, the findings highlight a tension between individual agency and collective identity. While BAs frame their decisions as objective and experience-based, their practices are shaped by cultural fit, symbolic boundaries, and the desire for legitimacy within the network. BANs, in turn, institutionalize these informal codes, reinforcing homogeneity while projecting openness. Ultimately, the paper argues that belonging to a network matters not only structurally but as a cultural field that shapes perception, enforces norms, and reproduces dominant ecosystem values. By tracing these informal logics, the study contributes to emerging research on the sociocultural foundations of entrepreneurial ecosystems and opens space for future inquiry into the cultural reproduction of power and inclusion within these systems.Theoretically, the study draws on entrepreneurial ecosystem theory, organizational culture (Allaire & Firsirotu, 1984), and social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Empirically, it uses a qualitative case study of the Business Angels Club Berlin-Brandenburg e.V. (BACB), combining netnographic analysis of digital self-presentations with narrative interviews. To trace how BAs perform identity work, reproduce group norms, and evaluate ventures through informal, often implicit, cultural filters. Importantly, the paper highlights how individual business angels differ from BANs and identifies the tensions between individual agency and collective group dynamics.
Findings reveal that angel investing is not simply a financial practice but a social one, deeply embedded in narratives of belonging, legitimacy, and symbolic boundary-making. BANs amplify these dynamics by institutionalizing informal codes of evaluation and reinforcing homogeneity while presenting themselves as open. Investment decisions are shaped less by objective criteria than by cultural fit, shared identity, and heuristic judgments. As such, BANs function as informal institutions that play a central role in reproducing the ecosystem’s dominant values.
This paper will evolve from a completed master’s thesis and seeks to develop contribution for a publication. It contributes to a growing body of work on the sociocultural foundations of entrepreneurship by offering an understanding of how early-stage investors influence ecosystem trajectories. It opens space for further inquiry into how cultural actors within ecosystems reproduce or contest dominant narratives and with what consequences for inclusion, innovation, and systemic change.