Effects of entrepreneurial experience and feedback acceptance on legitimacy attainment

Investors in the new venture setting rely on multiple cues to decide whether new ventures exhibit appropriate characteristics in order to be considered legitimate. During business pitches, entrepreneurs have the ability to take action in order to enhance and manage the legitimacy of their ventures. In this study, using signaling theory as a theoretical framework, we contend that legitimacy can be attained by communicating distinct entrepeneurial characteristics and enacting specific entrepreneur behaviors, such as demonstrating entrepreneurial experience and accepting potential investors’ feedback during the business pitch. By analyzing 50 episodes of the Turkish version of Dragons’ Den, a popular television show where entrepreneurs pitch for investments from business angels, we begin the empirical testing process contending that entrepreneurial experience and acceptance of feedback positively affect the probability of attaining cognitive legitimacy and also have a synergistic effect when both are demonstrated.