{"p"=>"This article investigates how a scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision-making shapes the performance of student-founded new ventures across countries through the psychological resource of founder resilience and varying institutional conditions. Building on the theory-based view, psychological capital theory, and an institutional perspective, the study conceptualizes scientific decision-making as a deliberate, evidence-oriented logic that entrepreneurs employ in uncertain environments, and examines how this logic translates into better performance when founders are more resilient. Using a cross-country dataset of 19,071 new ventures established by student entrepreneurs across 47 countries at different stages of economic development, the article shows that the indirect effect of a scientific approach on venture performance through founder resilience systematically varies with a country’s economic development level, highlighting important boundary conditions for the effectiveness of “acting as scientists”. In doing so, the study advances international entrepreneurship research by revealing when and where science-based decision-making and founder resilience jointly enhance new venture performance."}