Dear John, We Decided Not to Give Your Company Money This Round

“We love your company and what you’re doing, but you’re still a bit early stage for us.”

“This is great. Keep in touch because we really want to get in for your ‘A’ round.”

“We’re usually used to writing much larger checks. Let’s regroup in a while and see how things are progressing so we can jump into a later round.”

“We definitely want to come in on this round, but we need to wait for a strong lead to put it together.”

Welcome to the world of the private equity (PE), “It’s not you, it’s me,” brush off. If you’re new to the fundraising side of the startup game, you will hear these and variations on this theme a lot. Get used to it, especially if you are planning for PE-backed growth over multiple rounds. You are going to deal with a lot of rejection and take a lot of meetings where the only tangible result is a full bladder from the coffee you drank while giving your pitch.

It may not seem completely obvious, but the fundraise function is a sales activity, just of a slightly different format. Much like a pure sales activity, you will get an earful of rejection. As a result, you will need to develop the skills and talents to present your product, which in this case is your company as well as developing a keen sense for what is a solid…