Overcoming the Liabilities of Newness and Building Legitimacy in a B2B SaaS Startup Context

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Company formation, Business Plans, grade: B, Lund University, language: English, abstract: Despite the high failure rate of startups linked to the extensively researched lack of legitimacy, research has not captured an aggregated legitimation strategy framework for new B2B SaaS ventures. Particularly for the growing SaaS industry, perceived legitimacy plays an important role due to high buying risk.

This study examined which legitimacy-building strategies exist and can be applied by new B2B SaaS ventures, introducing a framework of practical strategies. Hereby, the study revealed specific insights on how to overcome liabilities of newness and the lack of legitimacy through legitimacy-building activities.

This study applied a retrospective case-based examination of the legitimation management implemented by four B2B SaaS startups from Skåne, Sweden.

The collected data implied the high relevance of a lack of legitimacy for new B2B SaaS ventures. Furthermore, it revealed the application of strategies described in previous research as well as newly surfaced, seemingly SaaS-specific strategies.

This study aggregated research on legitimation strategies and extended it by newly identified strategies, providing a groundwork for further cross-sectional research and contributing to the legitimation research in B2B SaaS.