When No Means Yes
Just to be clear, ignoring most no’s is how you end up fired or in jail. The no I’m talking about is the one you hear from investors, friends, family, and people in the startup community (the ones you don’t even remember asking for their opinions).
I still remember the day when I told my parents that I decided to quit my job to start my own company in sports. They couldn’t really say no, but the way they felt was clearly written on their faces. Even our initial partners and supporters started dropping out, until it was just my current partner and me. Li3ib wasn’t launched yet, the application wasn’t released, and the only way I could give you an elevator pitch was if we were taking the elevator to the top of Burj Khalifa… and it stopped on every floor. Even though we couldn’t explain our vision clearly, we saw something that no one else did and that gut feeling trumps every no you can ever hear. It made sense to me and my co-founder and that’s all that mattered; I quit my job and four months later so did he.
The tricky thing is there are some no’s you can’t ignore and the most important no’s are the ones that aren’t explicitly told. Low application ratings (no), high costs and slow growth (no), customer friction (no) are all ways that people are telling you no without even using words. If there’s no traction and you’re still burning cash, congratulations you just spent time and money building something no one wanted and it’s your fault because you didn’t listen to them. There are also ways that people tell you “no” without explicitly saying it:
- “I’d love to download your app but my 258 GB phone doesn’t have enough space for another app”
- “We’d love to invest in your company in the second round of investments”
- “I’d be happy to sit down and discuss your idea four years from now”
Believe it or not the last statement was literally said to me. Yes… I made that exact face too. So then, how do you know which no is worth ignoring and which no is the one you need to listen to. Everyone has an opinion so you really just need to focus on the opinions that matter.
You need to listen to your customers, employees, and stakeholders that are paying you money. That doesn’t mean you need to implement everything they have to say. There’s a famous quote that Henry Ford took credit for, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry ignored them and created cars instead.
We’re all happy that Henry Ford ignored his customers, but when Snapchat did the same they ended up losing around $20 billion. Snapchat decided to change their user interface and ended up confusing their users (this could’ve been easily avoided by beta testing and using focus groups). The users started yelling “no” and made a petition to change the interface back to the way it was. Snapchat continued to ignore their users until one of their most influential users tweeted a very insightful opinion on the redesign:
This tweet alone “wiped about $1.3 billion off the company’s market value”.
So then how do you know when your customers are asking for faster horses or giving you valid criticism? The honest is answer is, there is no real way to know. Trust your gut — if it’s wrong, quickly pivot and fix your mistake but if it’s right you might end up working with official sports organizations and expanding into other countries.
