In this study we are interested in the antecedents of entrepreneurial passion. Specifically, we investigate whether entrepreneurial passion emerges out of socialization from the social environment, emerges inside individuals guided by their human capital, or various combinations hereof? We find that emotional support from the social environment socializes passion positively while entrepreneurs’ human capital in form of task-related and non-task-related human capital increases passion respectively positively and negatively. Identifying those two important antecedents of entrepreneurial passion contributes to prior literature on passion mainly focused on consequences. We test our hypotheses on a unique dataset of Finnish entrepreneurs who started their business between 2005 and 2010 and received a startup grant from the government (n=1,556).