This article aims to analyse how one becomes a social entrepreneur. For this purpose, we interviewed the founders of five social entrepreneurial organisations active in the field of social integration in Sweden. To analyse our data we found situated learning theory in communities of practice to be a relevant lens. The results indicate that these social entrepreneurs’ previous participation in integration activities was a critical factor in generating ideas for new and innovative activities. Moreover, the network of individuals and organisations that they obtained in this period assisted them on the way to learn essential skills and develop their social entrepreneurial organisations. Becoming a social entrepreneur thus seems to be a result of both individual and collective learning processes that entail learning from concrete experiences embedded in specific organisational settings.