Why You Want Investors To Say No To You
The odds are decidedly against you, like 300:1 against you, when you try and raise money from VCs. So, you'd think hearing an investor tell you, "No, I'm not interested," is the last thing you'd want to hear.
Well, that's exactly true. In fact, hearing "No" from an investor can be great. I'll explain why, and how you can use "No" to your advantage in this short video. I hope you like it.
Read The Video Transcript Below:
So how do you recognize when a VC is politely telling you no, they're not interested, but doesn't say no? That's probably one of the most frustrating things because no is a very rare commodity when you're dealing with investors.
Typically, here's what you're likely to hear. Listen, do you hear anything? That's the answer. Typically silence is what you'll hear. They just won't respond. They'll move on. They won't respond. That's the typical one.
If they do respond, you're likely to hear something like this. "Oh, it's interesting. It's an interesting investment." Oh, Oh, those are painful words to hear. I can remember we were pitching a fund on Sand Hill Road. We were raising our Series A. And I was pretty excited actually about this particular pitch because I thought the investor would be a good possible investor for us. He knew the space and he said to me, "You know what, Brett, you didn't have me at hello. It's an interesting idea."
That's no, that's what no, sounds like when you're dealing with investors, when they tell you, "it's interesting." When they tell you nothing, or when you're lucky enough to actually hear no., That's what no. sounds like when you're dealing with an investor.
So should you follow up? Yeah, go ahead and follow up. But you know, there's this old saying, you know, "Good news travels fast." If they're interested, they're going to let you know. Trust me on this one. They'll let you know.
It's not gonna work the way you want, but yeah, absolutely follow up. Be a polite pest. Go for it. Because you never know. Maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe they missed an email, maybe they forgot. You never know.
But in all likelihood, if you're hearing silence, if they're telling you the investment is interesting, or some other kind of soft pass words like that, or maybe if you get lucky and it's really the hard no, which is the best thing in the world you can hear is a hard no because then you can move on.
And then you can ask them, who else should I talk to? And by the way, that's how I found one of my investors is when somebody told me no. And then they were nice enough to say, "You know what, Brett, you should go talk to these guys. I think they'd be perfect for you. I'm happy to make an introduction." And it turned out I knew a partner there, so it was great. And then four meetings later, we had an investor. I'm Brett brettjfox.com have a great, great day.