Drawing on theories of emotional contagion and goal setting, we propose two mechanisms as to how employees' perceptions of entrepreneurial passion influence their commitment to entrepreneurial ventures. Testing these mechanisms with data from a survey of 124 employees, we find that employees' perceptions of their supervisors' passion for inventing, founding, and developing differentially impact commitment. While perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion for inventing and developing enhance commitment, passion for founding reduces it. Employees' experiences of positive affect at work and their goal clarity mediate these effects. Our results have implications for the literature on entrepreneurial passion and leadership in entrepreneurial firms.

Drawing on the literature on social ties, we develop a model toward entrepreneurs’ assessments of early international entry. We argue that social ties in foreign markets trigger entrepreneurs’ assessed attractiveness of exploiting potentially valuable opportunities contingent on their perceptions of the venture's absorptive capacity and their generalized trust in others. We test these hypotheses using a metric conjoint experiment, and data on 4,352 international entry assessments nested within 136 entrepreneurs. Our findings reveal significant cross–level interactions between the characteristics of entrepreneurs’ social ties, venture absorptive capacity, and entrepreneurs’ trust in others in explaining how they assess international entry.

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