The Power of a Good No
Insights from my pitching journey with a focus on the rejection responses and how these rejection emails shaped our path forward and refined our pitch.?
A rejection email can be seen as a ‘blow to the ego’ and hard to take, but I want to help reframe these insights, and how a “good no” can help you refine a pitch and assess your business model against a criteria for how capital is allocated to start ups.
? 50 said no after the first meeting
?? 19 VC’s did not respond after the meeting
?? 96 requested more information after the meeting and I will share this journey and the outcomes for more information in a future post.?
Of those 96, I’ll update the Sankey chart shortly with how many said yes and no subsequent to getting that information.
For this update I want to share how some of the no’s helped me to review the business and the narrative and hone my pitch further. Just to be clear - before running this process, I had only a limited understanding of how capital is allocated to pre-seed and seed stage companies. So for me, the initial no’s were like tests - that later no’s hit harder emotionally, but more on that another time.
Treating a Good No as a positive outcome
Every time we received a No, I spit them into i) a Boilerplate No, and ii) a Good No.?
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A Boilerplate No is obvious - it is just not a good fit and it sounds like this:
“Not excited and couldn’t get behind it - "I have taken it to the IC / don't think I could take it to IC as we just can’t get excited about what you are doing” - this is a very standard response.
A Good No has context, rationale and detail of why they have said no. I broke this latter group into key areas so I could look at the feedback where?there was commonality. A good no sounds like this:
The first 50 that said no shared different comments across these areas with various messages. But they were still very thematic and could be bundled into these 10 areas. Some of the feedback was very detailed and open ended to come back when these concerns had been addressed.
Each Good No - I was often encouraged or welcomed to have a call, which I did engage in a back and forth and they were willing to have a call to share their thoughts. There were often three or four paragraphs long with clear advice on what we could do to mitigate this for the business to succeed.?
At the end of week, I would collate each Good No and put the feedback into the themes above. I would call a founders meeting and we would look at the reasons for no and try to identify if we hadn’t clearly articulated the answer or if we were barking up the wrong tree. It was a humbling experience and one that helped shape future conversations.?
My one key takeaway from this is: Funders (VC’s) - try to share honest feedback with founders and founders take it with good grace and see it as an opportunity to grow and get better.
If you want to know more or set up a coaching call send me a message.
Really interesting piece with great insights Emma. Thanks for sharing!
Founder of Radial Change | Director of CRR UK | ORSCCert, PCC CPCC
10 个月Echo all comments already made Emma Rees great article and it got me thinking about the coaching business I am running No VC involved but lately we have received lots of good NO, you have given me a road map to review the NO’s and adjust our bid proposals ????
I teach women to negotiate so they can ensure they're treated fairly
10 个月Love the analysis - thanks for sharing Emma Rees!
Investor and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years experience in wine, tech & finance in the United States, Argentina, Hong Kong, and Spain.
10 个月Jac White thought you might be interested in Emma Rees research on her female-led funding journey and what she's working on over here on our side of the pond...
Global CEO Crystal AI | 1 X Successful Exit | EY Winning Women | AI | Technology | Recruitment | [email protected]
10 个月Thank you Emma Rees for the great article! I know each time I get a no I feel rejected then the next day I get to read the reason (if given one) and manage to fix that in the next pitch (or realize it really just was the fit). Thanks again for the reminder