Abstract Growing network models have proved insightful in many domains. This work introduces an “opportunistic attachment” mechanism where incoming nodes, in deciding where to join a growing network, consider features of the entry points available to them. For example, an entrepreneur looking to start a thriving business might consider the expected revenue of many hypothetical businesses. We explore opportunistic attachment, in isolation, via a minimal model where PageRank is used to score the opportunities available to incoming nodes. Despite its simplicity, the model gives rise to rich node dynamics, path-dependence, and an unexpected degenerate structure. We go on to argue that this model serves as a highly stylised representation of growing economic systems under a specific set of theoretical assumptions. To the extent the major simplifications hold, opportunistic attachment joins the list of candidate mechanisms that could conceivably relate the structure of an economic system to its future development. Our stylized entrepreneurs face a shifting “opportunity space” where the number of potential business opportunities is combinatorial and the quality of these opportunities is endogenous to the network structure. This initial exploration is markedly limited by the discrete choice framework of growing network models, highlighting a need for explicitly evolutionary frameworks in this domain.