Abstract
Entrepreneurial motivation literature has made huge strides, yet how it unfolds in the daily life of an entrepreneur largely remains a black box. In this paper, we employ experience sampling methodology and analyze multilevel data from daily surveys spread across 16 days (twice daily) from 85 entrepreneurs, leading to 1087 observations to depict that the previous day’s progress in the venture motivates the entrepreneur to expend efforts the next day via the mediating mechanism of positive affect (as a positive feedback) experienced in the morning, and this process is moderated by ‘affect spin.’ Our paper makes critical contributions to entrepreneurship theory and practice.