Entrepreneurial motivation literature has made giant strides, yet how it unfurls in the daily life of an entrepreneur largely remains a black box. In this study, we depict how the previous day’s progress in the venture motivates the entrepreneur to expend efforts the next day via the mediating mechanism of affective state (as positive feedback) experienced in the morning by focusing on the within-person dynamics. Further, we explicate how learning goal orientation intensifies this feedback process and why it is important for entrepreneurs to be oriented toward learning rather than performance by focussing on the between-person dynamics. We execute this research by employing experience sampling methodology and analyzing multilevel data from daily surveys spread across 16 days (twice daily) from 87 entrepreneurs (n=1090 observation pairs). This paper makes important and critical contributions to entrepreneurship theory and practice.
