Creating an entrepreneurial story in digital spaces: the journeys and experiences of social media entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT

The emergence of digital technologies is transforming entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. This creates a plethora of research questions at the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship. A key question is if existing entrepreneurial models are applicable to understanding digital entrepreneurship. In this study we provide novel insights by exploring the following research question: How are established models of the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience challenged by the proliferation of social media? We utilize the entrepreneurial journey model proposed by Morris and Kuratko (2020) and the ten characteristics of the entrepreneurial experience proposed by Morris et al., (2012) as reference tools to understand if traditional process-based approaches to entrepreneurship are still relevant within a social media digital context. We provide novel contributions to traditional descriptions of entrepreneurship by providing an augmented view through a digital lens. The findings illustrate that the proliferation of social media challenges our established theoretical understanding of both the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience. We also provide new insights into the lived experiences of social media entrepreneurs, who are a distinct type of entrepreneur, with very different entrepreneurial journeys and experiences compared to traditional entrepreneurs.

KEYWORDS:

• digital entrepreneurship
• social media
• entrepreneurial journey
• entrepreneurial experience
• digital spaces
• identity

1. Introduction

The primary impact of digital technologies is the expansion of human ability to acquire, produce, distribute and consume information at an unprecedented rate and with infinite reach (Pournaras and Lazakidou 2008). Online platforms provide novel contexts within which individuals can not only express and cultivate their passions but also become entrepreneurs (Cutolo and Grimaldi 2023). Zhao et al. (2022) report that there is almost universal agreement within extant studies that digital technologies, such as social media, have had a transformative impact on entrepreneurial journey and/or experience. However, there has not been an equivalent transformation in our theorizing of the entrepreneurial journey and/or experience. Nambisan et al. (2017) highlight that the intersection between digital technologies and entrepreneurship questions longstanding entrepreneurial theories and they call for research on how digital technologies shape entrepreneurial behaviour, processes and outcomes.

Prior research acknowledges that in practice, entrepreneurship is a process (McMullen and Dimov 2013; Davidsson and Gruenhagen, 2021) yet empirical research often presents the entrepreneurial process as a set or series of stages or steps, implying that it is a manageable event (Kuratko, Morris, and Schindehutte 2015). To reflect the process orientation of the entrepreneurship, there have been calls for research to examine the entrepreneurial journey across different spaces and contexts (Fritsch, Pylak, and Wyrwich 2022; McMullen and Dimov 2013; Nambisan et al. 2017; Welter and Baker 2021). Indeed, Nambisan (2017) highlight the need for additional research on how digital technologies can result in non-linear paths towards entrepreneurial initiatives. To date, research has focused on the opportunities and challenges which social media presents for businesses (Laurell et al. 2019; Sahaym et al. 2021). However, less is known about the influence social media has on the entrepreneurial process and how it presents a viable space within which to develop a digital start-up. It is suggested that prior research has overlooked the social and cultural contexts in which digital entrepreneurs are embedded (Kelly and McAdam 2022). Digital start-ups are not just a research context but an emerging area of study which opens up opportunities to understand the type of entrepreneurs who develop their ventures digitally. It is also a context which requires the need to review and revise existing frameworks of both the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience (Cutolo and Grimaldi 2023; McLaughlin, Bradley-McCauley, and Stephens 2022; Nambisan and Zahra 2016; Urbano et al. 2023; Zaheer et al. 2022).

Consequently, we argue that there is a need to conceptualize the experiences of digital entrepreneurs by exploring how they develop an entrepreneurial presence and viable businesses in social media based digital spaces. In this study, we explore the following research question: How are established models of the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience challenged by the proliferation of social media? To achieve this, we explore the transition to entrepreneurship, specifically, how digital entrepreneurship emerges through social media presence. This approach enhances our understanding of the lived experience of individuals who use their social media profile to live and experience their entrepreneurial journey. We also explore the driving forces that direct and sustain entrepreneurial processes that occur via social media. Our research provides novel contributions to traditional descriptions of the entrepreneurial journey by providing an augmented view of the entrepreneurial journey through a digital lens (Morris and Kuratko 2020; Nambisan 2017). Consequently, we provide novel insights into how digital entrepreneurship requires an updated set of theoretical lenses to be fully understood (Törhönen et al. 2021; von Briel, Davidsson, and Recker 2018; Zaheer et al. 2019; Zhao et al. 2022).

2. Theoretical framework

2.1. Digital entrepreneurship and social media

Long et al. (2022) in their systematic analysis of the extant literature, divide digital entrepreneurship research in to two stages: the emerging stage (2003–2017) and the booming stage (2018–2021). Digital entrepreneurs are usually depicted as young, well-educated and urban opportunity-driven entrepreneurs, benefiting from social networks and up-to-date technical and business skills (Delacroix, Parguel, and Benoit-Moreau 2019). Wilk et al. (2021) explains that digital entrepreneurship creates new ventures and transforms existing businesses by developing novel services and/or the novel usage of digital technology. Elia et al. (2020, 4) highlight that digital technologies can be both “the ‘output’ or object of the venture creation and operational processes, as well as the context where such processes are conducted. Recent literature has identified the need to explore how digital technologies disrupt the nature of the entrepreneurial journey and the routine activities of entrepreneurs (Autio et al. 2018; Kelly and McAdam 2022; McLaughlin, Bradley-McCauley, and Stephens 2022; Rippa and Secundo 2019).

Digital technologies can take many forms. In this research we focus on social media which is both a digital tool and a digital space that encourages synchronous and real-time interactions (Gavino et al. 2019; Mack, Marie-Pierre, and Redican 2017; Nzembayie, Buckley, and Cooney 2019; Olanrewaju et al. 2020; Zaheer et al. 2022). Some scholars have proposed digital spaces such as social media as being emancipatory contexts for entrepreneurial identity formation (Kamberidou 2020; Lorenzo-Romero, Alarcon-Del-Am, and Constantinides 2014; Pergelova et al., 2019). Troise et al. (2022) posit that social media is challenging traditional patterns of entrepreneurial activity and cannot be ignored by either entrepreneurs or stakeholders within entrepreneurial ecosystems. Social media platforms are interactive, scalable technologies that allow individuals and groups to create, share, discuss and modify user-generated content (Reuber and Fischer 2022). Cutolo and Kenney (2021) suggest that platform-mediated markets not only attract enormous numbers of existing entrepreneurs but also support the growth of entire ecosystems of producers, sellers and specialized service providers.

Changes in digital media consumption habits and the economics of digital goods, create favourable conditions for the emergence of different types of entrepreneurs (Gavino et al. 2019; Gustafsson and Khan 2017; Long et al. 2022) who will have different journeys and experiences to those described in the extant entrepreneurship literature. Social media entrepreneurs produce and sell digital goods based on personal knowledge, experience or talent using ubiquitous multimedia tools and distribute them across inexpensive online platforms (Abdelfattah, Al Halbusi, and Al-Brwani 2022; Delacroix, Parguel, and Benoit-Moreau 2019; McLaughlin, Bradley-McCauley, and Stephens 2022). Samara and Terzian (2021, 284) report that there exists a ‘heterogeneity among digital businesses which can cause confusion, since the concept is often associated with both businesses which are entirely tech-dependent and is used to describe businesses which just use digitalization in their marketing and communications operations’. In this research, we are focused on the former; businesses which are developed and run using social media tools and spaces. It is suggested that the pervasive growth of social media has fuelled the convergence of leisure activities, the result is that lifestyle choices are starting to take on work-like characteristics (Jones, Ratten, and Hayduk 2020; Stone and Stubbs 2007; Törhönen et al. 2021). For example, prior research has explored how entrepreneurs have monetized lifestyle blogs to the extent that some famous bloggers’ endorsement incomes exceed that of salaried employment (Gustafsson and Khan 2017).

In recent years, the term content creator has emerged as something of a catch-all to describe individuals who circulate content on social media platforms, driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and desire to generate their own media brands (Craig 2019). We treat this group and its definition as separate from social media entrepreneurs. We do this because, the literature on content creators, explores issues relating to cultural production, platform-specificity; algorithmic architecture; platform dependency, creativity and branding (Arriagada and Ibáñez 2020; Nieborg and Poell 2018; Scolere, Pruchniewska, and Duffy 2018). In this paper our working definition of a social media entrepreneur is an ‘individual who experiences their entrepreneurial journey exclusively via social media platforms’ (Ali, Balta, and Papadopoulos 2023; Gustafsson and Khan 2017; McLaughlin, Bradley-McCauley, and Stephens 2022; Olanrewaju et al. 2020; Troise et al. 2022).

2.2. The changing nature of the entrepreneurial journey and experience within digital spaces

Cha and Bae (2010) posit that the entrepreneurial journey is one in which the time and the place of an entrepreneurial process is uncertain, but that the entrepreneurial agents have a sense of direction and energy to sustain the process to actualize their vision. The path of an entrepreneurial journey is neither entirely ‘planned nor entirely circumstantial, but concerns interaction between entrepreneurial purposefulness and contingent environments within the parameters of the venture emergence system’ (Selden and Fletcher 2015, 608). Traditionally, entrepreneurship is often conceptualized as a set of stages and/or processes (Clausen 2020; Cunningham, Lehmann, and Menter 2022; Levie and Lichtenstein 2010; Moroz and Hindle 2012; Selden and Fletcher 2015).

Whilst there are many variations and conceptualizations of the entrepreneurial process, Morris and Kuratko’s (2020, 4) conceptualization is well known in the literature and provides a simple and concise overview of the principal processes involved in entrepreneurship which include: identifying an opportunity; developing a business concept; formulating a business model; identifying resources; acquiring the necessary resources; implementation/adaption; management/growth; and exit/harvest. Caution is often given when using models, even a process perspective can imply that entrepreneurship is linear, when in reality venture creation is messy, chaotic, non-linear and ambiguous (Morris and Kuratko 2020). Indeed, prior research has identified that across a series of critical stages/processes, entrepreneurs face unique challenges which vary depending on multidimensional contextual factors (Henry et al. 2021; Messina et al. 2022). This has led to calls for research exploring entrepreneurship across different contexts and spaces (Autio et al. 2018; Foss et al. 2019; Wadhwani et al. 2020; Holzmann and Gregori 2023).

In line with prior studies, we argue that the proliferation of digital entrepreneurship requires a renewed interest in the entrepreneurial journey due to digital technologies presenting differentiated tools and spaces challenge long held assumptions relating to the processes and outcomes of entrepreneurship (Abdelfattah, Al Halbusi, and Al-Brwani 2022; Ferreira 2020; Gustafsson and Khan 2017; McLaughlin, Bradley-McCauley, and Stephens 2022; Nambisan et al. 2017). The literature has started to explore how digital technologies disrupt the nature of the entrepreneurial journey and the routine activities of entrepreneurs. However, previous studies are descriptive and although they often propose managerial implications, there is an absence of theoretical development. We argue that social media presents a space which changes the dynamics of the entrepreneurial journey; particularly the processes associated with opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial effectuation, and entrepreneurial outcomes.

Adopting an ‘entrepreneurial process’ perspective can be useful to help study the entrepreneurial journey (Dimov and Pistrui 2020; Garud and Giuliani 2013; Langley et al. 2013; Moroz and Hindle 2012). McMullen and Dimov (2013, 1481) propose that the study of entrepreneurship as a journey facilitates a dialogue about when it started and ended, whether it might be subdivided into variables or events, and what if anything remains constant throughout the process. Similarly, in their seminal paper, Morris et al. (2012) propose that the entrepreneurial experience is a cumulative series of interdependent events. They presented 10 common characteristics (Table 3) of the entrepreneurial experience, posing the question ‘if entrepreneurship is fundamentally experiential, how come we know surprisingly little about the nature of the experience (2012, 11). We propose that using the work of Morris et al. (2012) as a reference point, alongside Morris and Kuratko’s (2020) conceptualization, allows us to develop insights into the social media entrepreneurial experience and a more nuanced account of the impact of social media on patterns of entrepreneurial journeys and experiences.

Table 1. Participants.

Id	Gender	Age	Education	In-Business	Business	Platform	Start
P1	Female	27	Secondary	4 years	Health & Fitness	Insta & Tiktok	Unplanned
P2	Female	27	Secondary	5 years	Fashion	Insta & Tiktok	Unplanned
P3	Male	41	Higher Ed	7 years	Fitness, Wellness, Counseling	Insta & LkIn	Unplanned
P4	Male	57	Higher Ed	6 years	Law	Insta & LkIn	Unplanned
P5	Male	44	Primary	4 years	Food, Lifestyle	Insta & You	Unplanned
P6	Female	27	Higher Ed	7 years	Comedy	Insta & Tiktok	Unplanned
P7	Male	51	Higher Ed	4 years	Coaching	LinkedIn	Planned
P8	Female	38	Higher Ed	10 years	Marketing, Coaching, Lifestyle	Multiple	Planned
P9	Male	44	Higher Ed	6 years	Fitness, Physio, Lifestyle	Instagram	Planned
P10	Male	31	Secondary	5 years	Sport, Coaching, Education	Insta & Tiktok	Planned
P11	Female	35	Secondary	10 years	Fitness, Lifestyle, Law	LinkedIn	Planned
P12	Female	27	Higher Ed	7 years	Product Testing, Instruction	Instagram	Planned
P13	Male	42	Secondary	10 years	Music, Comedy, Lifestyle	Insta & Tiktok	Planned
P14	Female	42	Higher Ed	20 years	Health, Ind Services & Coaching	Multiple	Planned

Table 2. Processes in the Social Media Entrepreneurial Journey (Morris and Kuratko 2020 revisited).

Process	Description
Identifying an opportunity T1 How it started T2 Listening to followers	The journey starts with the identification of an opportunity. Two distinct starting points exist. The first includes people for whom the sharing of a ‘story’ or ‘lifestyle’ or ‘hobby’ creates a following which over time becomes a customer base. The second group are entrepreneurs who prepare a ‘story’ or ‘lifestyle’ which they expect to attract a following from which to create a customer base.
Creating the Business T2 Listening to followers T3 Growing a customer base	A business idea is formulated in two ways. The entrepreneur (based on market research) develops a business concept that relates to an interest, hobby or service gap. Alternatively, an individual (with limited expectation of pursuing entrepreneurship) starts to identify a service based on follower interactions and an emergent understanding of entrepreneurship. A formal business plan may not be created, and the business may remain agile and highly responsive to followers.
Resourcing T3 Growing a customer base T4 Emergence	The entrepreneur determines the necessary resources needed to scale up and sustain the business. Expenditure is needed to purchase high-end technology to support ‘broadcasting’ often across multiple platforms. The kit-out of a (home) office/studio may also be a requirement. Entrepreneurs will be creative in their approach to finance, but costs are not a significant barrier. Time is the main resource consideration.
Establishing the Business T2 Listening to followers T3 Growing a customer base T4 Emergence	The digital entrepreneur has excellent access to the activities of their competitors and to market trends. By tracking trends (i.e. hashtags) and rapid response to seasonal demand (i.e. health and well-being services in January) they can adjust service offerings, work practices as they become immersed in the market opportunity. At this point, the entrepreneur must transition to more formal processes and systems and adopt a business professional approach.
Reinvention/Exit T2 Listening to followers T4 Emergence	Typically, an entrepreneur considers an exit strategy that involves a combination of selling, transferring, or closing the business. The social media entrepreneur will exit, if the business becomes unviable and also if they suffer burn-out due to the intensity of the work environment. Given the time invested in developing their ‘Brand’ the entrepreneur will also consider reinventing themselves and restart with an alternative (often very different) service offering to a renewed following. This reinvention may occur due to changes in the needs of followers or a change in lifestyle of the entrepreneur.

Table 3. The entrepreneurial experience (Morris et al. 2012 revisited).

(Traditional) Entrepreneurial Experience	(Social Media) Entrepreneurial Experience	Interview themes
Temporal: venture creation involves a series of unplanned events and activities.	Temporal: venture creation involves 5 stages characterized by a mix of planned and unplanned activities.	T1 How it started T2 Listening to followers
Purposive and terminable: the individual chooses to become an entrepreneur and when to quit.	Purposive and terminable: the decision to become an entrepreneur can either by deliberate or driven by follower interactions.	T1 How it started T4 Emergence
Performative: the entrepreneur is a performer in an unscripted play.	Performative: the entrepreneur performs to maintain both an individual and entrepreneurial persona supported by a high proportion of scripted actions.	T2 Listening to followers, T3 Growing a customer base T4 Emergence
Transformative: the entrepreneur interacts with the context and environment to produce something novel	Transformative: the entrepreneur constantly interacts with their digital environment.	T2 Listening to followers, T3 Growing a customer base
Uncertainty: the entrepreneur has relatively little control over conditions and outcome.	Uncertainty: the entrepreneur has almost instant access to market trends, but the market is subject to volatility.	T2 Listening to followers, T3 Growing a customer base
Ambiguous: ambiguity surrounding what is to be done and how it should be accomplished.	Ambiguous: the entrepreneur plans their activities, with many prepared rather than live performances.	T1 How it started T2 Listening to followers, T3 Growing a customer base
Novel: encounters novel circumstances unconnected to their past experiences.	Novel: the entrepreneur controls the propensity for novel circumstances by shaping activities and interactions.	T1 How it started T2 Listening to followers, T3 Growing a customer base
Diverse: plays a multiplicity of roles involving different skills set.	Diverse: over time the entrepreneur plays a multiplicity of roles linked to an evolving persona and revenue streams.	T2 Listening to followers T4 Emergence
Volatile: experiences emotional peaks and valleys, and variance in the frequency and degree of highs and lows.	Volatile: the entrepreneur experiences emotional peaks and valleys linked to the invasive, intensity of social media entrepreneurship.	T1 How it started T4 Emergence
Emergent: new patterns and properties arise over time due to interactions	Emergent: new patterns and properties arise over time due to high level and frequency of follower and marketplace interactions.	T1 How it started T2 Listening to followers, T3 Growing a customer base T4 Emergence

3. Methodology

The phenomenon of interest is the journey and experience of entrepreneurship via an online social media platform. We propose the label of social media entrepreneur as an appropriate descriptor for the main actors in our study. The unit of analysis is an individual who is a full-time entrepreneur and who operates almost exclusively via social media. In consultation with digital marketing academics and consultants, we were able to identify 30 prominent digital entrepreneurs. Participants were contacted via social media and 14 agreed to take part in semi-structured interviews and to share their experiences and journey of becoming an entrepreneur via social media. Interview questions followed Morris and Kuratko’s (2020) eight processes/stages of the entrepreneurial journey. In line with our research question, the eight were used as ‘a priori’ constructs (Cacciotti et al. 2016; Poeschl and Freiling 2020; Power, Di Domenico, and Miller 2020; Stephens and Miller 2022) in order to probe if traditional approaches to entrepreneurship are still relevant within a social media digital context. Consequently, the interview guide focused on understanding the processes which led to the development of the social media venture. We also adopted a critical incident approach to encourage rich and thick description during process-based questions (Yin 2018), whilst also seeking to limit the risk of retrospective bias. This approach allowed us to elicit ‘a sequence of events’ from narrative accounts (Van de Ven and Engleman 2004). Data collection took place between May and September 2022. Interviews lasted for between 45–60 minutes and were audio recorded. Detailed notes and reflections were also used to capture the emergent narrative. Table 1 provides a profile of the participants. For participants 1–6 the journey was unplanned and for participants 7–14 the journey was planned.

Prior research (Byrne and Shepherd 2015; Gartner 2007; Garud and Giuliani 2013; Muñoz and Cohen 2018) highlights the need to explore the entrepreneurial narrative in order to enhance our understanding of entrepreneurship in different contexts. Narrative structuring (Kvale, 2016) was utilized to create a coherent story of the entrepreneurs’ experiences. This approach requires the presentation of raw data and extracts from the interviews in order to understand the lived experiences of the entrepreneurs. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was selected as the data analysis framework because it allows the analysis of meanings of phenomena and human experiences in specific situations (Arslan et al. 2022; Cope 2011; Gill 2015; Sengputa, 2022). IPA is particularly relevant to our research, since the narratives are relational, socially constructed realities and uncovering them requires analysing stories relating to experiences (Muñoz and Cohen 2018, 158). Although researchers have significant freedom when using IPA research, six stages of analysis are recommended and applied in this study. The six stages are: 1) reading and re-reading; 2) initial noting; 3) developing emerging themes; 4) searching for connections among emergent themes; 5) moving to the next case; and 6) looking for patterns across cases (Braun and Clarke 2006; Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2009; Tuffour 2017).

Following the IPA framework, a process of data reduction led to the identification of four overarching, cross-case themes which were common across the participants. The themes are: 1) New venture initiation: How it started; 2) Forming a social media business: 3) Listening to followers; Growing a social media business: and 4) The emergence of the social media entrepreneur. As we searched for common meaning across the connecting themes, relationships began to emerge (similarities and differences). Although the words used as labels for each participant might be different, what they represented was very similar in content. Indeed, as Patten and Stephens (2022) explain similar experiences can be expressed in different ways by entrepreneurs.

4. Findings

The findings provided rich accounts of the journeys which the entrepreneurs undertook and the experiences they had in developing their identity as an entrepreneur via social media. As noted in Table 1, the entrepreneurs businesses varied across industries and there was a mix of entrepreneurs who had unexpectedly started a business and those which purposefully set out to start a business on social media (column 8, Table 1). The diversity of cases helps to provide a holistic picture of the journey of entrepreneurs within a social media digital space. The findings are presented in a logical and narrative format to help us to understand the entrepreneurs’ lived experiences, with a focus on the core themes identified, representing key points in their entrepreneurial journey and key elements of the entrepreneurial experience.

4.1. New venture initiation: how it started

As noted in Table 1, for some of our entrepreneurs the journey was unplanned and resulted from initial queries from online followers which led to them recognizing an opportunity by seeing that followers extracted a lot of value from the information they were posting online:

I was spending a lot of time on IG. I started copying what others were doing, like stuff on my daily diet and videos of my gym sessions. Then in my ‘ask me something’ sections I started to get lots of queries about coaching. [P1]

It was a laugh, I just started sharing my weekly take-aways and the places I liked to go to. People were asking me for reviews, ratings and my followings just exploded. [P5]

I strongly believe everyone should know their legal rights and how to protect themselves against some of the misinformation that is out there. Initially it was ad-hoc but now I do daily videos to deal with client [sic] queries. [P4]

However, for some of the other interviewees the journey was very much planned. Consequently, they did demonstrate evidence of conducting some form of market research, looking for advice on how to develop a social media business and identified that they had some level of planned content which helped them to grow a social media following. For some of these entrepreneurs, it was based on identifying a gap within the digital space from which they believed they could develop into a business.

I saw so many singers getting a big following so I spent a lot of time creating professional videos and images that I could use for stories and reels. I had my pricing sorted too. [P11]

I knew that product reviews had moved beyond text and stars. So, I started to record videos of me testing and using products and giving my comments. I knew from other accounts that endorsements and commission would follow. [P12]

However, for others, social media was seen as a new virtual marketplace which permitted flexibility to work from home.

I started planning in college. I knew I want to stay at home and build my brand so that people would see me as the first point of call for business advice. [P8]

Based on the introductory observations we probed the interviewees to explore how key decisions around the core product/service were reached i.e. how they worked to grow their business.

4.2. Forming a social media business: listening to followers

It was identified by most of the entrepreneurs that a key step in growing a social media business was listening to followers, who are key customers and then adapting the business based on their feedback. This also helped to build up loyalty with their followers/customer base. In particular, the entrepreneurs who did not plan to start their business, noted that they were surprised by the extent to which their followers were a free and open source of knowledge and idea generation to help them develop content.

At the start I was just sort of guessing what people might find funny, my videos get a great reaction. I think Irish people could relate to them. Very quickly I was getting messages daily with ideas and requests. [P13]

I thought people would like my videos and that I would get some profile and maybe free stuff and endorsements, but my followers asked for sorts of stuff and the reviews quickly became my main focus. [P5]

For the entrepreneurs who had planned to develop a social media business, there was a clear plan for the initial start-up phase, which they developed from utilizing practices from other social media entrepreneurs. However, the entrepreneurs found that it was not a quick process to grow their following.

I had done my market research. There are lots of good content creators out there and I had about 8 ideas for videos to get me started. It probably didn’t take off as quick as I thought. [P12]

My plan was based on ideas from marketing people I really liked. I thought I could plan my content in advance, but over time I had to adapt to trends and what customers were asking for. [P8]

For all the entrepreneurs the ability to interact with followers (customers) was transformational to their initial activities and would go on to shape their entrepreneurial journey.

4.3. Growing a social media business: growing a customer base

Once a business started to emerge, the entrepreneurs soon realized that they had to focus on a key need or niche group of followers in order to grow the business. This was identified to be very different from traditional venture creation since often the customers were also those directing the product/service which the social media entrepreneur should provide. The ‘unplanned’ social media entrepreneurs identified that through analysing the most common queries and private messages from followers, they were able to carve out a unique value proposition which they could use to grow their customer base.

The volume of messages from some followers was overwhelming. When I got rid of the time wasters I figured if I focused on the female only coaching, I could make it work. My original plan was to build my profile to get people in my gym but that never needed to happen. [P1]

Initially when people started to ask for my advice, I was just giving it pro bono. And that’s the way I still deal with general queries, daily videos. But the volume of queries was such that I had to do a pricing model, like I would in the office. It became so busy so quickly. [P4]

However, for the ‘planned’ entrepreneurs, there was constant planning and execution of ideas to help capture a share of an existing market.

I have always focused on adding followers, that helps to sell my music and get gigs. Collaborations are also a great way to get new followers and then that brings endorsement deals. [P11]

I just follow the trends and reorganize myself to fit with female health needs. It is a tough market and I have to be constantly updating and doing new content to try and keep the queries coming in. [L9]

At this stage in the interviews the experience of the ‘unplanned’ and ‘planned’ entrepreneurs converged as they shared the insights in relation to the next theme relating to the entrepreneurial experience.

4.4. The emergence of the social media entrepreneur

The entrepreneurs reported that their social media activities gradually developed into a full-time job. They reported that they relished the ability to have flexibility in their work schedule, but that they underestimated the amount of time that being a social media entrepreneur takes. For example, some of the entrepreneurs reported that they find it difficult to take breaks:

I started for fun and maybe then thought it was something I would do after work in the evenings. But if you want to keep your profile you need to spend so much time online interacting with people and updating your content. [P6]

It is super flexible in terms of when you do your content, but the biggest drain is that you can’t take any breaks or you lose people very, very quickly. [P14]

If I look at my phone there loads of messages, which don’t get me wrong is great for business. But there is a lot of time wasted and I don’t know when if ever I can switch off. [P7]

Two key observations emerged in relation to the positive aspects of being a social media entrepreneur. The first was the pride which the entrepreneurs had about their profile within their (online) communities.

I think people see the passion in my videos, I have key messages and lessons that I have learnt that I know if I share with people will make a big difference. [P3]

My clients waste so much time and money on buying rubbish. I know that my video reviews are a key source for people when they decide to buy that outfit or an expensive product. [P2]

So many players could make huge gains for their sport if they just modified their attitude to training. The people I work with succeed and do things that reflects on me too. [P10]

The second key observation was the loyalty and love that the entrepreneurs had for their followers, which links to the unique ability to interact with people via social media platforms.

On the good days you can really help people with what are for them big problems. They can interact in a way that works for them, and I can very quickly give them what they need. [P4]

I feel like I am speaking to friends when I do my videos. In the main the comments are all full of love and thanks for the ideas and you get to see what people do afterwards. [P8]

I know that my videos on mental health have saved people that is a level of emotion you are not going to get in many jobs, and I don’t think I would hear about it if I wasn’t on social media. [P13]

The findings identified that social media entrepreneurs experience a dynamic journey, whilst drawing on different knowledge and skills; and engaging in different actions.

5. Discussion

This research set out to explore how the journeys and experience of entrepreneurs who start ventures in digital spaces such as social media, challenge frameworks of the entrepreneurial process and journey. The study is a response to calls for research from scholars who suggest that digital technologies can result in non-linear paths towards entrepreneurial initiatives (Kelly and McAdam 2022; Nambisan 2017). The distinguishing characteristic of an entrepreneur is that they create a venture (Gartner 1988). In a social media digital space, entrepreneurs can create new ventures which can be both planned or accidental. The entrepreneurs undertake monetizing activities which are associated with increasing their numbers of ‘followers’. The followers represent ‘customers’ both explicitly through purchasing services and products from these social media businesses or which generate the entrepreneur income via a form of affiliation awards. From the sample of entrepreneurs in this study, it was clear that there were two distinct experiences regarding the start of an entrepreneurial journey. The first was entrepreneurs which emerged from sharing a ‘story’ or ‘lifestyle’ or ‘hobby’, which created a following, which over time became a customer base and resulted in them recognizing an opportunity to become an entrepreneur. The second group are entrepreneurs who developed a ‘story’ or ‘lifestyle’ which they purposefully sought to develop to attract a following, and from that, to then create a customer base.

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) explain that social media platforms allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. The implications for entrepreneurship are significant since it changes the nature of the entrepreneur-customer relationship. The findings of this study reveal that the ‘unplanned’ entrepreneurs did not realize the potential to generate income until they started receiving requests from followers. They also identified that followers were a source of knowledge about how they could both develop and sustain their business. Social media facilitates the co-creation of a business model. This occurs as consumers share their individual needs, experiences and perceptions about a service opportunity (Nambisan and Zahra 2016). Instigating constant interaction with a marketplace requires an agility and responsiveness that seldom occurs in traditional entrepreneurial ventures. However, it also fosters a time consuming, high intensity business model where the entrepreneur must interact with a high volume of customer feedback and requests.

Palalic et al. (2021) posit that in order to establish a profitable relationship with consumers, entrepreneurs should be ‘emotionally involved in their consumers daily lives’ to maintain their loyalty. Social media achieves a level of embeddedness that positions the entrepreneur as a key individual in the lives of their followers (consumers). The intensity and frequency of these interactions was not envisaged by the original proponents of demand-side narratives of ‘unplanned’ entrepreneurs. The respondents identified that they had not envisaged the impact that the proliferation of social media platforms would have on the cumulative articulations of needs, desires, problems, ideas, solutions, perceptions and everyday experiences of the diverse participants in the opportunity space.

In order to answer the research question: ‘How are established models of the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience challenged by the proliferation of social media?’ we will now discuss how the findings align or differ from the work of Morris and Kuratko (2020). From the empirical findings, it was identified that in a social media digital space, the entrepreneurial journey can be conceptualized using four processes with associated activities 1) New venture initiation: How it started; 2) Forming a social media business: 3) Listening to followers; Growing a social media business: and 4) The emergence of the social media entrepreneur. Table 1 presents a depiction of the processes undertaken during the social media entrepreneurial journey.

5.1. A process-based explanation of the social media entrepreneur’s journey

To help structure and visualize our understanding of the social media entrepreneurs’ journey, we mapped our empirical findings to the eight processes/stages proposed by Morris and Kuratko (2020). Based on the narrative journeys of the entrepreneurs, we propose that the social media entrepreneurial journey can be synthesized into five key processes (see Table 2). Social media entrepreneurs appear to have a more streamlined process, which we suggest results in the stages of ‘Identifying resources’ and ‘Acquiring the necessary resources’ being able to be grouped into a single a stage ‘Resourcing’. Furthermore, Morris and Kuratko’s (2020) stages of ‘Developing a business concept’ and ‘Formulating a business model’ can be grouped into a single stage of ‘Creating the Business’ within a social media digital space. We have also merged ‘Implementation and adaption’ and ‘Management and growth’ into a single stage ‘Establishing the Business’. Finally, we have amended the final stage to include the term ‘Reinvention’ which emerged as a key activity for all the entrepreneurs.

The journey of the digital social media entrepreneur and in particular our revised process-based model depicting the entrepreneurial journey of social media entrepreneurs (presented in Table 2) have important implications for understanding how the entrepreneurial process may differ in digital spaces. In particular, the findings highlight the emergent nature of entrepreneurship in a digital context (Morris and Webb 2015). Traditional entrepreneurs have always tried to respond to market forces. However, social media transforms the process of opportunity recognition and alters the factors that influence the decision to start the entrepreneurial journey. The development of a (social media) business is fluid and the entrepreneur and their business plan (if they have one) must be agile and explicit in their responses to followers and market trends. There are limited barriers to entry, resource needs are limited, with new skill development a key part of the development phase (Abdelfattah, Al Halbusi, and Al-Brwani 2022; Delacroix, Parguel, and Benoit-Moreau 2019; Long et al. 2022). The need to be responsive to followers means that the ending of one business model and the starting of another could be suggested to be blurred for the social media entrepreneurs, who are expected to ‘reinvent’ themselves to sustain their business. The entrepreneurs emphasized that running a social media business means constant interaction with followers. This is tiring and can cause burn out. Furthermore, the entrepreneurs identified the risk of follower (customer) fatigue and apathy. A drop in followers, similar to a traditional business losing customers, can result in the business ‘failing’ or needing to exit.

5.2. Implications of social media entrepreneurship for our understanding of the entrepreneurial experience

Morris et al. (2012, 11) propose that the entrepreneurial experience is a cumulative series of interdependent events with the entrepreneur as an actor in an ‘unscripted temporal performance’. They presented 10 common characteristics of the entrepreneurial experience. To address our research question, we revisited these 10 characteristics and compared them with out findings to allow identification of the ‘common’ characteristics which social media entrepreneur’s experience versus that of a traditional entrepreneur. This is presented in Table 3 and will now be discussed.

The entrepreneurial experience proposed in Table 3, is a variation of traditional descriptions. However, there are several subtle, but significant differences. Activities remain a mix of planned and unplanned, but the influence of follower interactions is far more significant for social media entrepreneurs. The personal and business life and identity of the social media entrepreneur are highly intertwined and ‘performances’ of both are needed to sustain the business. The positive aspects include: instant access to market information; direct contact with customers; flexible work schedules and locations; and a clear connection between lifestyle and product/service provision. However, there are also negative aspects to life as a social media entrepreneur: market trends change rapidly and customers can switch provider with ease. For a social media entrepreneur, the mix of private life and business life is very invasive and the intense nature of relationships on social media means that the entrepreneurial experience may at times be overwhelming.

6. Conclusion

The emergence of digital technologies is transforming entrepreneurial processes and outcomes and creating a plethora of research questions at the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship (Long et al. 2022; Mack, Marie-Pierre, and Redican 2017; McLaughlin, Bradley-McCauley, and Stephens 2022; Nzembayie, Buckley, and Cooney 2019; Olanrewaju et al. 2020). Zaheer et al. (2019) posit that digital entrepreneurship is not just a context but an entirely new field of research and requires a new set of entrepreneurial theories. Understanding the circumstances and reasons which facilitate digital entrepreneurship will also help to guide business practice and public policies (Sahut, Iandoli, and Teulon 2021). McMullen and Dimov (2013) propose that further research is needed to understand the nature of the entrepreneurial journey, its variables and events. Whilst many authors have studied this journey (Clausen 2020; Figueroa-Domecq et al. 2022; Kibler et al. 2015; Moroz and Hindle 2012, von Briel et al., 2018; Zaheer et al. 2022), the proliferation of social media platforms and their disruptive and invasive nature poses key questions for our research community. This research set out to explore if entrepreneurship concepts and experiences transfer over to digital spaces. Specifically, it sought to understand if established models of the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience are applicable in a social media context. The findings from this study indicate a modified, streamlined version of the entrepreneurial journey proposed by (Morris and Kuratko 2020). As described in Table 2 the five processes are: identifying an opportunity, creating the business, resourcing, establishing the business; and reinvention/exit. In addition, we present eight characteristics, adapted from the work of (Morris et al. 2012), of the social media entrepreneurial experience.

In addition, we have also provided new insights into the lived experiences of social media entrepreneurs who are a distinct type of entrepreneur, with very different entrepreneurial experiences compared to traditional entrepreneurs. This research has given voice to individuals who have created and maintain a personal and business identity on social media, appearing to followers both as an ‘individual’ and as an ‘entrepreneur’. The findings provide valuable insights in relation to the constructs of personhood and the activities of social media entrepreneurs. As an example, our findings in relation to the start of an entrepreneurial journey are in contrast to repeated assertions in the literature that entrepreneurship involves an active choice to exploit an opportunity and to start a business. We have found evidence of the accidental entrepreneur, an individual with no ‘business plan’ or entrepreneurial ambition. This is an issue that merits further research.

Our findings help to identify how digital spaces such as social media can change the entrepreneurial process and present context specific opportunities and challenges. These findings have implications for practice. Tables 2 and 3 have value for practitioners who are involved in supporting entrepreneurs and developing digital entrepreneurial capacity within ecosystems. Training provision could adopt a process-based approach and deliver content aligned with each of the five processes described in Table 2. Support agencies need to identify and target training and supports for unplanned entrepreneurs, who will be acting at pace, in a fluid, intense business environment (described in Table 3). Finally, we need to focus on the wellbeing of all entrepreneurs. Educational programmes on the value of breaks, from both online activity and business activities are needed to off-set the propensity for burn-out and to create appropriate work-life balance.

Notwithstanding these contributions, this research has a number of limitations which present an agenda for future research. Our findings provide embryonic insights into the social media entrepreneurs journey and lived experiences. However, it was outside the scope of this paper to be able to delve into detail on how the entrepreneurs carve out their entrepreneurial identity in a digital space and the implications of this for other elements of their lives. Furthermore, it was suggested by some of the entrepreneurs that the constant need to stay on top of followers demands in order to stay relevant, may lead to burnout. There is a growing body of literature identifying the harmful impact that spending too much time online can have, however, less is known on how social media entrepreneurs may have stress and wellbeing implications which are differentiated from traditional entrepreneurs. The sample used for this research did not include entrepreneurs who have exited their social media venture; therefore, future research could focus on the exit journeys of social media entrepreneurs. Finally, the notion of invention and re-invention appeared within the interviews and further study is needed to conceptualize and theorize in relation to this phenomenon.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.