Viewing the entrepreneurship process as an entrepreneurial journey and employing a longitudinal process research design, this study aims to advance the current understanding of the dynamics of interactions between entrepreneurs and stakeholders in the development of a digital new venture (DNV). Drawing parallels to a Scandinavian folk tale about nail soup, which illustrates the concept of creating something substantial from seemingly nothing, we apply two logics of entrepreneurial behavior – bricolage and engineering – to explain entrepreneurs' interactions with key stakeholders while navigating the entrepreneurial journey.

Based on the analysis of our rich empirical evidence, collected over six years of following the journey of one DNV's founders, we develop a set of propositions explaining how these two logics are intertwined in the process of DNV development over time, as well as how they are applied for initial and subsequent stakeholder engagement.