Two decades of informative research has asserted that legitimacy attainment is essential to the survival and growth of emerging ventures, yet little empirical research has been conducted to either (a) validate the notion that emerging ventures transition from pre-legitimacy to legitimacy, or (b) identify when such a transition happens for the average new venture. Hence, the present research seeks to begin bridging this substantial gap by introducing and testing the notion that a financial legitimacy threshold (FLT) exists within emerging ventures. Using attainment of financing as a proxy for initial legitimacy, we test our hypothesis that an FLT exists on two large, independent data sets—the 1998 (N = 3,033) and 2003 (N = 3,751) Surveys of Small Business Finances. Results indicate that emerging ventures tend to finally transition to legitimacy and, thus, substantially shed external liabilities of newness at 12 years of age, six employees, and $379,000 in sales. Our findings that an FLT exists advance the literature by (a) suggesting that new venture legitimacy is a dichotomous variable that emerging firms either do or do not possess, and (b) articulating a point in size, age, and revenue that average emerging ventures must achieve before they are able to substantially neutralize external newness liabilities via legitimacy attainment.