From posts to ventures: Platform-mediated entrepreneurship on Instagram

This study examines how Instagram-based ventures are constructed through sustained engagement with the platform's affordances rather than through linear stages of entrepreneurship. Using observational symbolic netnography of eleven public Instagram business accounts in India over two months, the study traces how entrepreneurs experiment and differentiate under conditions of uncertainty. The findings show that entrepreneurial experimentation on Instagram is continuous, public, and socially evaluated. At the same time, differentiation is achieved primarily through visual coherence, narrative framing, and persona-led identity work rather than functional product novelty. At the same time, entrepreneurs display platform-conscious behaviours to cope with algorithmic volatility, uneven visibility, and political–regulatory disruptions. By conceptualising Instagram as a governing infrastructure rather than a neutral tool, the study advances a platform-mediated understanding of venture construction that foregrounds dependence and vulnerability as constitutive conditions of contemporary digital entrepreneurship.