Rejections

This edition is for founder who were rejected by VCs

I have never taken rejections personally until recently. 

Hello friends, welcome to the 12th edition of TheHustleBook. Today I want to share my experience about rejections from Venture Capital (VC). I was never bothered about the rejections in my life. But the rejections from VC have been quite stressful for us lately (and me personally).

Let me explain: VCs are the ones who are studying startups on a regular basis. They are somehow wired to see the potential of a startup and take their bets.

They probably have to go through 1000s of pitches every month, let alone the ongoing engagement from previous months. They have to make quick decisions and move forward. 

These are the feedback we have received so far

• “you are too early for us”

• “we have put you on passive review”

• “this is not on our thesis”

• “not venture backable”

• “not a genuine problem, it’s just a trend”

Now coming to our situation, yes it definitely it feels bad but I have personally become immune to this now. 

The reason I say this, is because nobody has probably seen the future. We can only predict it and be right about some of the time but not always 100%. The same is applicable for VCs. 

They might have figured out some patterns and structures to evaluate and filter out the quality pitches. This helps them deal with the mass application and undeniably this might be necessary. But if you believe you have built something exceptional, you cannot just stop, you have to keep going.

Sometime I feel, a lot of startup couldn’t make it world because they were being rejected by the VCs. They might not have been Venture Investable business but could have been profitable and sustainable business with 10-50s of employees doing couple of crores in revenue.

A VC once sent me this on rejection: 

This stayed with me.

I remember a founder mentioned at an event I attended recently:

“Let the world do its job, your only job as a founder is to convince. Why else you are a founder in the first place?"

Fix your problem of articulation and communication. Go sell”

There are countless examples, where VCs have made the wrong decision and sometime they regret on their decision as it’s humanely impossible to predict the success of a startup. 

I feel, it's because it’s hard to predict about a human. I have always believed that humans are limitless. Given an opportunity, they have always shown exceptional examples for this - the same might be true for founders. 

A founder needs to be adamant of what they believe and be determined enough to go and take action on them anyway (easier said than done 😤)

In the ending thoughts, for someone like us coming from small towns of India with no IIT, IIMs, or any Ex-Startup tag - what was the probability we could reach until here? build something useful to thousands of folks? I guess it's almost ZERO.

Hence I don't think we need to fear, or take any rejections or any competition seriously until and unless we are aligned with what our customers are paying for and keep innovating and adapting to the changes in the market. 

Two reasons we are bullish on this problem space we are solving at Fueler:
1. The skill gap is real. A portfolio will always be an active catalyst between learning and skill-building for an individual and eventually for an organization while making hiring decisions

2. We continue to believe that solving for proof of work for categories other than Tech-focused roles is a large pain point where a ubiquitous platform like GitHub can be created

The vision is to build the gold standard for non-tech talents in India and then for the world. Something that GitHub, Hackereath, and Kaggle have achieved.

It would mean the world to us if you share Fueler with your friends. We need your help in creating as much as awareness about Proof of Work

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Note for first time founder

• Don’t take rejection personally. Rejection is not the end of the world

• Take feedback from your customers, community folks, industry leaders and professional

• Learn the art of storytelling, this will help you a lot once you plan to startup

• As a founder, everyday is going to be a demo day for you. Acept it and be okay with it

• Take care of your health - both mental and physical

Rinkesh, a very good friend of mine shared this with me while I was writing this issue

That’s it for this edition. I hope you learned something new from this edition. I will see you on the next one. Please feel free to share with your founders friends.

Your friend,
Riten