Abstract
Fundraising pitches represent a crucial moment in new ventures’ lives because they are central to both securing resources and gaining legitimacy. Pitching entrepreneurs use various verbal and nonverbal self-presentation techniques to construct a legitimate distinctive entrepreneurial identity in the eyes of potential investors. This self-presentation process has become a prominent theme in the entrepreneurship literature. Cues about pitching entrepreneurs’ personality and cognition as well as rhetoric choices and gesturing have received considerable scholarly attention in the past two decades. This study reviews the literature on this topic using the dramaturgical framework developed by symbolic interactionism theory.