
Which startups were rejected several times by VCs before getting funded? - olalonde
http://www.quora.com/Which-startups-were-rejected-several-times-by-VCs-before-getting-funded
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wallflower
If we expand beyond VCs, the prototypical example is "Colonel" Harland Sanders
and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

> But by not knowing that Harland David Sanders was an actual man, who lived
> an actual life, people miss out on more than they might imagine. For one
> thing, the Colonel wasn't just a fast-food baron who represented his company
> on TV, the way Dave Thomas (a Sanders protégé) later did. Sanders was the
> living embodiment of what his food supposedly stood for.

His white suit wasn't the invention of a marketing committee; he wore it every
day and was never seen in public for the last 20 years of his life in anything
else. (He had a heavy wool one for winter and a lighter cotton one for
summer.)

He was a failure who got fired from a dozen jobs before starting his
restaurant, and then failed at that when he went out of business and found
himself broke at the age of 65. He drove around in a Cadillac with his face
painted on the side before anybody knew who he was, pleading with the owners
of run-down diners to use his recipe and give him a nickel commission on each
chicken. He slept in the back of the car and made handshake deals.

<http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2019218,00.html>

~~~
noodle
i think its interesting that, for a guy writing a book about the colonel, he
doesn't seem to know why they renamed themselves officially to "KFC". it was
because of a trademark dispute with the state of kentucky, not because it
wanted to appear more health-conscious.

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j_baker
I've never raised funding for a startup before, but I bet it's like most other
things in life: persistence pays off more than skill. You just have to not let
rejection get to you (even though it can be tough at times!).

~~~
tomjen3
Maybe one should take a clue from The Shawshank Redemption: I am coming up for
rejection next week :)

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NY_USA_Hacker
When an entrepreneur gets a "rejection" by a venture partner, that is only
very weak evidence that there is anything wrong with the entrepreneur's
project. Instead, the project might become very successful. Uh, a venture
partner is not some wise judge obligated to thoroughly evaluate all the
projects and pick the best ones. In particular he is not obligated to fund all
the good projects.

Instead a venture partner is just a person, with some time, energy, interests,
expertise, obligations, and, usually, funds. So when an entrepreneur contacts
venture partners, major fractions of those partners:

(1) are fully busy with their current investments, e.g., helping troubled
CEOs, doing triage, or trying to arrange exits,

(2) are busy raising a new fund from the limited partners (much like the
entrepreneurs try to do from the venture partners),

(3) are near the end of their last fund and maybe making some follow-on
investments but no new investments until they get a new fund (if they do),

(4) are close to retirement and just winding down,

(5) are looking to leave their present firm for another venture firm or maybe
something else,

(6) are focusing on investments at a stage different from the entrepreneur's
project,

(7) are focusing on a 'space' different from the entrepreneur's project,

(8) have their voice-mail and e-mail in-boxes full and are only looking at
deals already filtered for them by a few people they know,

(9) have already made a lot of money and just are not working very hard now,

(10) are geographically too far from the entrepreneur.

Also, venture partners just rarely look at seed or Series A deals in any great
detail. In particular only a tiny fraction of venture partners have the time,
patience, and qualifications for looking at details.

Instead of details or anything thorough, to save time and brain energy,
venture partners concentrate on a few surrogate decision criteria. For a seed
deal for, say, a Web 2.0 project, they see if the area of the company is hot
and if the team has made money for venture partners before and maybe try the
user interface and evaluate the user experience. Again for Web 2.0, for a
Series A, they look at ComScore numbers and revenue and earnings numbers.

Or, a venture partner tries to invest in some deals where they can make some
money but do not put in all the extra effort needed to invest in all good
deals or find the very best deals. They don't worry that they might miss a
good deal. For missing the next Google, they believe that no one in venture
capital can detect the next Google in seed and Series A deals so don't worry
about that.

This isn't the best they would, could, or should do; and it's not what their
Web site or public image suggests they do; it's just what they do do.

