•Combination of a country’s economic, financial and sustainable factors.•This combination leads to opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.•The fsQCA methodology has been used in order to examine the relations with the analysed variable. There are two main reasons when entrepreneurs decide to start a new venture: opportunity and necessity. Opportunity-driven entrepreneurship is expected to provide a stronger long-term positive impact than necessity-driven entrepreneurship. This study aimed to identify the combinations of the economic and sustainable development factors of countries that may be related to opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. In order to identify the combinations of the Sustainable Development and Economic aspects influencing opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, we analysed the data for 2017 from 57 countries. For this purpose, we conducted a cross-national analysis using the fsQCA methodology, which has proved suitable for small-sized datasets. Data were retrieved from four databases: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Country Risk Score, World Bank Database, and Sustainable Development Goals Index. Thus to analyse opportunity-driven entrepreneurial motivation, we considered economic and financial aspects jointly with social and gender equality, education, responsible production, innovation and infrastructure indicators.