When the VCs say “no”

Yet another good article from Marc Andeerssen about startups. Every entrepreneur goes thru this phase – being rejected by VCs. The article helps you interpret the “no” you hear often!

It’s an old — and true — cliche that VCs rarely actually say “no” — more often they say “maybe”, or “not right now”, or “my partners aren’t sure”, or “that’s interesting, let me think about it”….More

It is very important not to lose hope when you are rejected. It is definitely not the end of the world. Rather it should only increase your resolve to show the world what you can do without receiving external money. It is also important to hear and analyze what the VC had to say. The most often thing you get to hear in India is “you are not big enough” “your revenues are not big enough for us”.

If you are confident about your product and you need help with funding, consider being a member of TiE. You get to meet entrepreneurs from all phases of entrepreneurship (ideating, startup, success, not-successful) at TiE. They have recently started a “mentoring” group where you can be mentored one-to-one. Give it a shot.

These days even media sites don’t want to write about you unless you are “big”. This is definitely a bad thing. Media sites don’t want to write even if you have a good product, they want to make sure you are a “name brand”. Wrong policy. Let the readers/users decide if the article is worth reading. I make it a point to tell our content team at Oneindia.com that we must write about “every” interesting and useful thing that could make a difference to the society. Usually TV channels cover such things but I rarely get to see such stories published online in India.