Entrepreneurs’ ability to acquire resources, including human resources, is dependent on others’ beliefs and expectations about what is ‘typical’ in an entrepreneurial context. This paper explores beliefs and expectations of how a typical entrepreneurial leader behaves and looks like, i.e. the ‘entrepreneurial leader stereotype’, from the perspective of potential employees. To analyze and describe those entrepreneurial leader stereotypes, we build on leadership categorization theory and stereotyping literature, and conduct an explorative interview study. Our data suggests that potential employees’ entrepreneurial leader stereotypes are associated with specific leadership behaviors and are cognitively associated with certain groups of individuals. We identify three categories of entrepreneurial leader stereotypes: the ‘hustler’, the ‘hipster’, and the ‘hacker’ – all associated with entrepreneurial leadership, men, and youth. We discuss the implications of our findings for entrepreneurship, recruitment, and leadership research, and for recruiting entrepreneurs.

企业家获取包括人力资源在内的资源的能力取决于他人对创业背景下“典型”事物的信念和期望。本文从潜在员工的角度探讨了对典型的企业家领导者的行为和样子的信念和期望，即“企业家领导者刻板印象”。为了分析和描述那些企业家型领导定型观念，我们基于领导力分类理论和陈规定型文献，并进行了探索性访谈研究。我们的数据表明，潜在员工的企业家领导定型观念与特定的领导行为有关，并且在认知上与某些个人群体有关。我们确定了企业家领导者的三类刻板印象：“骗子”，“时髦”，和“黑客” –都与企业家的领导，男人和年轻人有关。我们讨论了我们的发现对创业，招聘和领导力研究以及招聘企业家的意义。