Entrepreneurial motivation research has made huge strides, yet how it unfolds in the daily life of an entrepreneur largely remains understudied. In this paper, we explicate 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: the intrapsychic mechanism of self-regulation. Further, we depict how hope intensifies this feedback process and why it is important for entrepreneurs to be hopeful of upcycling their daily efforts: an interpsychic mechanism of entrepreneurial self-regulation. We leverage employing experience sampling methodology and analyzing multilevel data from daily surveys from 87 entrepreneurs twice a day for 16 days (n=1090 observation pairs). This work makes vital contributions to entrepreneurship theory and practice.
