Founder social capital and value appropriation in R&D alliance agreements

•This paper unpacks a positiverelationship between founder social capital and value obtained by biotechnology startups in R&D alliance agreements.•We build on the bargaining framework for surplus division and propose that founder social capital facilitates outside partnering opportunities for startups and enables bargainingadvantages in their R&D alliance deals.•More importantly, we develop a novel hypothesis about the complementarity between founder social capital and a startup'stechnological capabilities to suggest that the bargaining impact of founders’ social capital becomes more pronounced when a startupis also endowed with superior technological capabilities.•Further, we suggest that founder social capital can be particularly valuable when there is weak institutional financial support available for startups.