Smart so what? "Fear of Rejection"

I have been fortunate to work with a lot of smart people. Be it at my engineering college or B-school or at work. Amongst these smart friends whom I have met over the years, Sameer has been the friend who made me think differently, Smartly.

I remember, talking to my school friend Sameer (Founder -Emotionalfulls & upcoming Bollywood writer) made me feel that I too should try for NTSE (in 8th/2000) when scholarship was important, IIT(in 12th/2005) when career was important, Startups(in StanC/2015) when more than job, job satisfaction was important to finally starting up Bakbuck in 2018. Truly company of such smart people has inspired me and to an extent I also feel there is a good amount of smartness that I have acquired being in company of such people. This has generally been validated by a decent ratio of acceptance that I have seen so far at different stages of my life and that is the case with most of the startup founders- they are Smart who have seen a very good ratio of acceptance historically in whatever they have tried/done in their earlier life.

Entrepreneurship is different. Here, for the first time, chances of rejections are much higher than chances of acceptance. And that creates a problem, more for those who are smart and not used to it. It kind of becomes mentally tiring when you see rejection of product from users or rejection of pitch from investors for a long period. In a startup which requires external funding from investors this becomes a major reason for disappointment/frustration. Almost 90% of the investors you are going to meet shall pass the opportunity- most of them without a feedback, few with a politically correct feedback, and a very small number with truth (which is hard to digest and generally hurts). Does it impact? Yes, at least for me.

I generally schedule my investor meetings/calls back to back on same day so that other days I can focus on working with my team/Product. I have seen if the first meeting of the day does not go well it generally leads to a bad second meeting and so on. I start becoming more defensive, trying to incorporate every feedback so as to bring down the rejection rate. This is counter productive and leads to more rejection. While entering an uncharted territory, best outcome is possible when the entrepreneur is fearless, risk taking and aggressive. After all we are here to disrupt things and challenge the status quo. But then, it is not easy to switch your mind from a high rate of acceptance to such a low rate and still remain indifferent to it. One needs time to learn it. And that's what I call "Fear of Rejection" for Smart founders.

I remember one story here. At BPCL, before joining we had a detailed medical examination. It was something they used to take very seriously and failing it might lead to cancellation of job offer. One of my friends-Bipin was on higher side of weighing scale (at that time, now he runs Marathon!) and was nervous that his BP may be high and his government job might be at stake. So whenever the doctor used to test his BP, knowing the test and it's implication he used to get stressed and then BP will come higher than acceptable limit. I guess the test was taken at least 10 times before he got clearance from medical department to join BPCL. It is a similar situation when I look at things now. If the fear of rejection by an investor which has 90% chance starts playing then definitely I won't be fearless enough to show the bigger picture. One that very few believe today and is possibly the reason of an untold secret. We don't need everyone to see it, we just need one to see and believe in it. Till that that we have to learn and manage the fear.

Advice to myself and my fellow young entrepreneurs:

Apart from these fears, there is a lot of joy and excitement that one finds as an entrepreneur. There is a positive part of this roller coaster ride that I wish to cover in my next posts with "Hope of Magic" being the 4th one in #Averagepreneur series. Stay tuned.

P.S: # Averagepreneur is a way to show the emotional part of an average entrepreneur's journey. Read introductory post here: