The ecosystem literature underscores the need to manage complex interdependencies between complementors. It points to the role of the ecosystem-orchestrator in the creation and development of such efforts. Empirical work often focuses on existing ecosystems. This paper takes a supplementary approach; we study not only the ex-post actions an ecosystem-orchestrators undertake but also the strategic objectives they declared ex-ante. To that end, we follow firms attempting to orchestrate a portfolio of innovative startups from the moment they announce their effort to develop an ecosystem and for several years thereafter. We find that firms declaring an ecosystem strategy are more likely to create value when they engage in such actions ex-post. Furthermore, we observe that the positive association is sensitive to the type of ex-post action they engage in. This study contributes to the extant literature by presenting a theory of ecosystem orchestrators that accounts for ex-ante objective, ex-post actions, and realized performance.