Designing a business model is challenging as entrepreneurs need to respond to multiple and often competing demands. Yet, little research has investigated the decision-making process underlying business model design when facing competing goals and the micro-level mechanism (e.g., cognition, motivation) that explain differences in such decisions. We argue that the regulatory focus of entrepreneurs influences how they emphasize novelty and resource efficiency in designing their venture’s business model to meet competing goals of long-term stakeholder value (i.e., environmental impact) and short-term shareholder value (i.e., financial impact). Our findings from applying a discrete choice experiment conducted on 261 entrepreneurs show that when facing competing goals, promotion-focused entrepreneurs put strong emphasis on the novelty of a business model while prevention-focused entrepreneurs put little emphasis on novelty but maintain their attention toward resource efficiency, which is recognized as a tried and tested approach to achieve short-term (financial) goals. We contribute by disentangling the entrepreneurial decision-making process underlying business model design and, importantly, account for the role of entrepreneurs’ motivation in explaining the differences in business model design choices.