When Markets Resist, Entrepreneurs Persist: How Sustainable Startups Build the Future Anyway

Ville-Veikko Piispanen’s blog text on sustainable startups.

Sustainable startups often step into markets that seem unwelcoming at best and hostile at worst. Customers hesitate, regulations lag behind, and established players hold tight to old habits. Still, these entrepreneurs move forward with determination. In our recent research by Ville-Veikko Piispanen, Hanna Lehtimäki and Kaisa Henttonen Navigating Market Constraints: Sustainable Startups Driving Transformative Change Through Venture Creation published in Business Strategy and the Environment on 31 Finnish circular-economy startups, we found that these founders are not simply building companies, they are reshaping the very markets they enter.

Many of these ventures begin with a vague sense that “something is wrong.” Perhaps an industry produces unnecessary waste, or consumers lack practical tools to understand their environmental impact or just that something needs to be done if we are going to make it. These early insights are rarely polished business ideas. Instead, they act as the first spark, what we call a hazy but focused opportunity. Rather than waiting for perfect market conditions, the entrepreneurs begin to act: experimenting, testing, failing, learning, and trying again. Often, the first versions don’t work at all. Yet every failure teaches something crucial about customers, materials, technology, or timing, and each iteration brings the idea closer to viability.

This willingness to learn from experiments even when the market is sceptical is central to how sustainable startups move forward. At the same time, these founders are storytellers. They use narratives to make sense of uncertainty, to explain the value of sustainability to customers and stakeholders, and to build legitimacy in industries that aren’t expecting or asking for change. Their stories help frame a bigger vision: that their small startup is part of a wider shift toward a more sustainable and responsible economy.

In some cases, these ventures do more than challenge norms they aim to rewrite them entirely. We interviewed startups that rethought boating through sharing models, recovered valuable materials from overlooked waste streams, or introduced vertical farming before the trend had taken hold. These are not just incremental improvements; they represent systemic shifts in how industries operate. Sometimes, the innovation arrives “too early,” before customers or policies are ready. But even then, the founders’ persistence ensures that when the market eventually wakes up, a viable, tested alternative already exists.

What drives this determination? Interestingly, one of the strongest forces we found was emotion. Entrepreneurs spoke about moments of frustration like wasteful supply chains, disposable culture, inefficient infrastructure that felt impossible to ignore. Others described a personal awakening, a realization that their skills could be used for something more meaningful than their current work. These emotional triggers didn’t stay as feelings; they became catalysts for innovation. The frustration became a design question. The awakening

became a business model. Emotion, rather than weakening entrepreneurial judgment, often sharpened it.

Taken together, these patterns reveal something important: sustainable startups are not just reacting to markets, they are actively shaping them. Through experimentation, values, storytelling, and emotional commitment, they create the conditions for change even when supportive structures are missing. Their journey is rarely straightforward, but it is consistently transformative.

So, the interesting question is: Can small, value-driven sustainable startups truly shift entire markets, or are they destined to remain niche pioneers?

Our findings suggest that they can and many already do. By framing problems differently, partnering creatively, and refusing to accept the status quo, these entrepreneurs expand what markets consider valuable and possible. They pull customers, regulators, and industries in new directions, sometimes slowly and sometimes all at once. Their impact may begin with a single frustrated founder in a workshop, but over time, these ventures accumulate into meaningful momentum. Sustainable startups, in other words, are not just adapting to the future they are actively building it.

Ville-Veikko Piispanen ([email protected])

Article

Piispanen, V. V., Lehtimäki, H., & Henttonen, K. (2025). Navigating Market Constraints: Sustainable Startups Driving Transformative Change Through Venture Creation. Business Strategy and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.70438