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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Polish startup market participants contest the logic of assetization. Through IDIs and observations, it reveals how actors invoke alternative regimes of justification to reclaim agency and subjectivity against the arbitrary structural power of VC funds.

Paper long abstract

Extensive literature on the startup market positions it as a domain par excellence of valuation driven by fictional expectations (Beckert, 2019), forcing participants to adopt the logic of assetization (Birch & Muniesa, 2020). Due to fundamental uncertainty - stemming from a lack of financial history and the novelty of business models - startup valuation processes rely on the projected ability of entities to generate future rents.

Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews (IDIs) with Polish startup ecosystem participants and 5 participant observations at industry events, I argue that market actors regularly contest the logic of assetization through their discursive practices. This resistance manifests primarily in the invocation of alternative regimes of justification (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006), such as ecosystem relationship-building, the social agency of proposed solutions, or the strategic bending of market participation rules.

By situating valuation studies within micro-social interactions, I interpret the recourse to non-market justifications as a practice of contesting the structural power inherent in Venture Capital markets (Cooiman, 2024). Expanding on the concept of reflexive expectations (Birch, 2023), I demonstrate that awareness of the arbitrary nature of market rules can manifest not only in the instrumentalization of the "game" to gain a competitive edge but also as an attempt to reclaim agency and subjectivity within the market space.

Keywords: Assetization, Startups, Structural Power, Fictional expectations