During the transformation of economic systems, new ventures often are confronted with many resource constraints and uncertainties. As the key element of dynamic capabilities, the adaptive capability is vital for the success of start-ups. Successful entrepreneurs who have rich working experiences, can help the start-ups’ entrepreneurs to integrate resources and build social networks, and have a great impact on new venture’s adaptive process. Accordingly, drawing from the resource-based review and team prior experience, this study conducted a multiple case study to develop the theoretical framework. By the data collected from 4 founding teams of new high-tech ventures in a development zone in China, it was found that founding team with rich working experiences would decrease team members’ powerlessness, which might enhance the team’s adaptive capability, in particular, it happens when the team is with higher assimilation of cognition.