Getting things rolling

First post on a new blog.  This is certainly exciting!  I want to start off by saying I’m looking forward to this blog being a vital piece of the education at Babson.  I believe a lot of the value that Babson offers its students is the community it fosters. 

Now, on to the exciting aspect.  Those that know me understand that my interests are primarily targeted at early-stage Venture Backed companies.  I scour the postings of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and industry followers closely.  I will post many of the articles I find along the way that I think are relevant for entrepreneurs as well as those interested in pursuing a career in finance.

To start, I would like to bring to the forefront a post from some time ago written by Marc Andreessen.  For those that don’t follow his blog, I highly recommend it.  In this particular post, he talks about what “no” often means to a venture capitalist, and how entrepreneurs should interpret the answer, as well as followup suggestions.  Here’s an excerpt:

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”.

They do that because they don’t want to invest in your company given the current facts, but they want to keep the door open in case the facts change.

And that’s exactly what you want — you want to be able to go back to them with a new set of facts, and change their minds, and get to “yes”.

So be sure to take “no” gracefully — politely ask them for feedback (which they probably won’t give you, at least not completely honestly — nobody likes calling someone else’s baby ugly — believe me, I’ve done it), thank them for their time, and ask if you can call them again if things change.

To read the full article, click here.

I completey agree with a lot of what he is saying through the post.  It is very difficult to obtain a “yes” from VCs, so understanding how to handle the “no” is a very important part of being an entrepreneur.