The paper analyzes the concept of organizational legitimacy of startups and the main features of the process of building the legitimacy of startups through the digital context of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding represents one of the recent models of financing for entrepreneurs, as well as the possible channel for creating organizational legitimacy, ie the strategy of evaluating the initial value concept of startups and the strategy of obtaining resources. In such a digital environment, the legitimacy and consequently the success of the realization of the business concept in the market, depends on the specifics of the digital context and the institutional logic of the participants in the two-way digital platform. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of organizational legitimacy of startup entrepreneurs in the context of crowdfunding. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing research results on the specifics of the process of building the legitimacy of startups in crowdfunding and the predominant theoretical approaches in the background of the interpretation of entrepreneurial decision making in this process. The methodological approach of the research is the analysis and synthesis of the existing research results of the fundamental concept of organizational legitimacy and the established connection with the context of crowdfunding. According to the research results, implications and guidelines for further theoretical contribution in the process of building the legitimacy of startups are given, as well as practical implications aimed primarily at startups and other stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem within crowdfunding.