Pollack, J. M., Rutherford, M. W., & Nagy, B. G. (2012). Preparedness and cognitive legitimacy as antecedents of new venture funding in televised business pitches. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 36(5), 915-939. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2012.00531.x

• Pollack, J. M., Rutherford, M. W., & Nagy, B. G. (2012). Preparedness and cognitive legitimacy as antecedents of new venture funding in televised business pitches. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 36(5), 915-939. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2012.00531.x 

This is an original research article, but one that's meant to make a primarily theoretical contribution. In it, Pollack et al find that preparedness (P) is positively related to amount of funding received (AF). But then also cognitive legitimacy (CL) too. At the end of the day, they are able to show that CL mediates between P and AF. What's the temporal relationship though? Is there one? In any case, those three constructs are all related to one another in statistically signifiant ways. 

To generate this finding, Pollack et al respond to and take from a number of other researchers, specifically with ideas relating to legitimacy and passion. Entrepreneurial passion is found to have two subordinate parts, preparedness and affective passion, whereas legitimacy is found to have three parts, regulative, normative, and cognitive. Again, Pollack et al focus on P and CL. 

Methodologically,  Pollack et al got a bunch of undergraduates to code the TV shows Dragon's Den and Shark Tank. But Pollack et al also had to build statistical models, using among other things, these:

Item 1 I envision this business receiving high-profile endorsements in the future. 

Item 2 I envision this business receiving favorable press coverage in the future. 

Item 3 Because of the founder’s experience, the business has a founder who benefits the organization. 

Item 4 I envision this business having a top management team that will benefit the organization. 

Item 5 I envision this business having resources to be successful in the industry.

Again, model building, statistics. Ok, it was a cognitive legitimacy measure. 

Within their own field, Pollock et al's paper is important because it adds a theoretical robustness to certain notions that had been postulated but not investigated empirically. 

In this research, we sought to investigate antecedents of funding decisions made by financiers in response to entrepreneurs’ business pitches. In sum, we provide evidence to support the contention that preparedness behaviors are positively related to perceived cognitive legitimacy and, in turn, cognitive legitimacy predicts amount of funding. Specifically, results supported hypothesis 1, which proposed a positive relation between preparedness behaviors and amount of funding received from financiers. These data, accordingly, support a growing literature highlighting the important role of entrepreneurial preparedness. This work bolsters work of such researchers as Chen et al. (2009) and Cardon et al. (2009) who illustrate the role of preparedness in positively impacting venture funding decisions. We extended this research, though, by examining the theoretically derived mediating mechanism through which preparedness impacts performance: cognitive legitimacy.

So maybe we could sum this up in the form of a question. We know that preparedness impacts funding, but why? Because P resonates with or stokes CL. So CL is supposed to be deeper or something?

Two primary theoretical contributions arise from the present work. First, we propose and test a model through which entrepreneurs’ behavior affects funding decisions by investors. In doing so, we move beyond extant conceptualizations of the relation between preparedness and funding. We draw on the narrative sensemaking literature and delve deeply into the construct of cognitive legitimacy to provide theoretical clarification—we show, theoretically and empirically, that cognitive legitimacy is the mediating mechanism through which preparedness behaviors influence funding decisions. This extension to the literature provides a theory-based model by which researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors can more clearly understand how funding decisions are made and by what processes decisions can potentially be influenced.

Yes, it looks like that is exactly what is happening. 

Narrative sensemaking is important obviously. 

Four hypotheses. 

Hypothesis 1: In a new venture pitch, entrepreneurs’ preparedness behaviors will have a positive effect on amount of funding received from potential investors.

Hypothesis 2: In a new venture pitch, perceptions of cognitive legitimacy will have a positive effect on amount of funding received from potential investors.

Hypothesis 3: In a new venture pitch, entrepreneurs’ preparedness behaviors will have a positive effect on perceptions of cognitive legitimacy. 

Hypothesis 4: Cognitive legitimacy will mediate the relation between preparedness and the outcome of amount of funding.

Also note the new part. New was important because getting funded as a new startup is part of the problem, why the research exists in the first place. Serial entrepreneurs don't have CL problems because they aren't "taken for granted" (key phrase, control f). 

For me, there were some key sources on the business plan.

The recent identification and measurement of the “preparedness” construct offers what we feel is a potentially powerful behavioral component of an effective business pitch. Importantly, in Chen et al. (2009), preparedness was identified as a cognitively based construct. Building on this work, as well as the contentions of Vallerand et al. (2003) that recognize the importance of the affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of passion, we contend that perceptions of preparedness result primarily from observable entrepreneurial behavior.3 This contention is similar to the idea that the entrepreneurial behavior of writing a business plan may foretell a well-organized business. That is, consistent with a learning process view of entrepreneurship (e.g., Cope, 2005), the process of writing the business plan may foster insights and knowledge beneficial to the process of entrepreneurship (Bird & Schjoedt, 2009).

I also thought it was interesting that they called the Shark Tank producers to see if the show was real or not because Pollack et al were so worried about external validity, even when they had a source that said that these shows can be generalized to the real world. 

And just randomly, you were thinking of a limitation to your own study, how it seems like your coding might pull out characteristics of the businesses involved (pre-product, B2b, b2c, series A, etc.) rather than the genre of the pitch itself. 

I can also see why Teague, B., Gorton, M. D., & Liu wanted to research the pitch with practice theory rather than using statistical measures. 

https://utexas.box.com/s/au50i7kfpuzbgfk50upajudws0rdvznr