<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>This paper aims to analyze how different experts in entrepreneurship perceive their surrounding environment and business opportunities. The authors suggest that people act the way they do not only because of different interpretations of the environment but also because of the relative importance they give to the context and themselves in their mental scripts.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>A Mann–Whitney U non-parametric test and principal component analysis were conducted to examine the national expert survey from the global entrepreneurship monitor database of Chilean exports.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>When experts in entrepreneurship are compared, entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs differ in their use of certain cognitive resources about past or current events, but they map out future situations similarly, suggesting that their mental simulations may converge into similar patterns.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>This study provides useful insights regarding the impact that mental representation has on experts’ perception, by discussing how experts who are entrepreneurs perceive the entrepreneurial ecosystem and current opportunities differently than experts who are not entrepreneurs. The specific context plays a key role in the way entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs analyze their surrounding environment but not necessarily opportunities.</jats:p></jats:sec>
