Get used to NO

You’ll hear a lot of it.

They say startups are all about incredible highs and unbelievable lows. We’re yet to see the highs but we thought we hit the rock bottom a number of times in the last few months. Because we heard no. And so much of it. No you don’t seem to be in the right market. No you don’t seem to have the right team. No we don’t think you have enough traction. No we don’t think you can monetize. No we aren’t interested in investing now. No. Everytime we worked hard to address a no, there were two more waiting to hit us. With so much rejection, it’s easy to get disheartened. Very easy indeed. But if you are cooking up something new, something different, something that changes the status quo, you will get a lot of nos. And if you’re doing it right, you should too. So just get used to it.

After getting a big no from an investor recently, I got all worked up and set off on a post-nortem analysis with my cofounder. The more we looked back, the more we realized that meetings where we got nos were far more instrumental in getting us to the next to do and the next checked box than those where people readily agreed with us. In a kind of twisted way, we didn’t want to hear nos but they were exactly what we needed to hear most. We didn’t do too much of a good job dealing with the nos, but that’s a story for another day. What’s important is that we now know what our nos are worth.

This is a post I penned a few months ago, but has remained relevant to us till today.