Abstract: The crucial role of exemplars in shaping the competitive environment and strategic positioning of new ventures has been well acknowledged. However, the impact of similarity to emerging exemplars within a nascent category on investor valuations remains unclear. To address this gap, we develop a dynamic exemplar-based model that integrates the continuous emergence of exemplars and their multidimensional strategic features. Leveraging the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), we analyze new ventures backed by venture capital (VC) firms in China’s burgeoning Internet sector from 1999 to 2015. Our findings reveal that a moderate level of innovation-based and marketing-based exemplar similarity is both associated with the highest likelihood of receiving VC investments. Furthermore, we find that the effect of innovation-based exemplar similarity is more pronounced during the earlier stages of new venture and category development. In contrast, the impact of marketing-based exemplar similarity remains stable over time. Our study has important implications for the management literature on optimal distinctiveness, nascent category, and VC investments.