This paper offers a fresh perspective on national culture and entrepreneurship research. It explores the role of Culturally-endorsed implicit Leadership Theories (CLTs) – i.e., the cultural expectations about outstanding, ideal leadership – on individual entrepreneurship. Developing arguments based on culture-entrepreneurship fit, we predict that charismatic and self-protective CLTs positively affect entrepreneurship. They provide a context that enables entrepreneurs to be co-operative in order to initiate change but also to be self-protective and competitive so as to safeguard their venture and avoid being exploited. We further theorize that CLTs are more proximal drivers of cross-country differences in entrepreneurship as compared with distal cultural values. We find support for our propositions in a multi-level study of 42 countries. Cultural values (of uncertainty avoidance and collectivism) influence entrepreneurship mainly indirectly, via charismatic and self-protective CLTs. We do not find a similar indirect effect for cultural practices. •We introduce culturally shared leadership ideals to comparative entrepreneurship.•We conduct a multi-level study on over 500,000 individuals residing in 42 countries.•Cultures endorsing charismatic and self-protective leadership ideals have higher rates of entrepreneurship.•Cultural leadership ideals influence entrepreneurship more proximally than cultural values.•Cultural leadership ideals mediate the effect of cultural values on individual entrepreneurship but not of cultural practices.