This study was conducted to explain the survival of venture firms from the perspective of entrepreneurs' roles, based on theories of human and social capital, following the IMF economic crisis of 1997—an environmental shock to the Korean economy. Prior research has argued that venture firms, due to the liabilities of newness and smallness, are vulnerable to the emergence of unexpected situations or changes, and thus are likely to fail easily when confronted with such environmental shocks. However, this study contends that even amid environmental shocks, the probability of survival can increase depending on the content and intensity of human and social capital. Based on empirical analysis of data on the survival and failure of 115 venture firms around the time of the foreign exchange crisis, the quantitative characteristics of human capital—such as entrepreneurs' education levels or the presence of experience—were found to play no significant role in survival. In contrast, the qualitative characteristics of human capital—namely, how closely one's education or experience is actually related to the current business—were found to have a significant effect on venture firm survival. Furthermore, social capital, such as entrepreneurs' external networking and internal cohesion-building capabilities, was found to have a highly significant impact on venture firm survival. These findings contribute new scholarly implications regarding the survival of venture firms following environmental shocks, supplementing research from evolutionary or adaptive perspectives on organizational creation, death, and growth. Additionally, this study provides an important theoretical foundation regarding what entrepreneurial roles are required to enhance firms' survival capacity in crisis situations.