Metaverse Founderscape: Evaluating Entrepreneurial Ideation, Team Dynamics, and Pitch Performance in Immersive Virtual Incubation Platforms

The rapid evolution of metaverse technologies has unlocked new potentials for entrepreneurial cooperation, while very little attention has been given to the empirical study of founder behavior in immersive virtual incubation environments. We investigate the impact of virtual reality-based incubation on three key entrepreneurial processes; quality, teaming, and pitch. An experimental mixed-methods design (with controlled experiments, behavioral analytics or post-session surveys) was employed to engage participants in VR-enabled brainstorming, team model-building and pitches. Immersive incubation is significantly associated with creativity, cognitive flow and ideation fluency with spatial collaboration tools. Mediating interaction through avatars further enhances communications balance and interpersonal cohesiveness, and decreases the level of performance anxiety when making pitches. Pitches on VR were rated more clearly, persuasively and innovatively compared to 2D platforms for collaborative work. The study provides empirically based insights to design the next-generation metaverse incubation systems and demonstrates how immersive environments can enhance entrepreneurial capability development.