Entrepreneurship 101: How many times do they have to say no?
Last night’s Entrepreneurship 101 speaker, Dr. Michael May, talked about the importance of persistence — never letting a “no” stop you. One of the webmail questioners complained about being turned down for funding numerous times and asked about when to give up.
Question of the week:
How many times have you been turned down?
We like to hear from you — to establish the MaRS record for number of times a business proposal has been turned down for funding. But there is a catch — you must have ultimately been successful, proving that persistence does indeed pay! (Multiple rejections from the same source do count).
The MaRS Persistence Award is up for grabs!
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As a Venture Group Advisor at MaRS, Tony advises entrepreneurs and high growth companies, particularly in environmental, advanced materials and manufacturing markets, with a special emphasis on mentoring and development of entrepreneurs.
Tony,
In answer to your question, “How many times have you been turned down?”, I think we were turned down between 150 and 200 times in our last company, Vector Innovations. We were trying to raise money in the middle of the dot-com bust - and even an award from the IT Financing Forum did not help.
A lesson for other entrepreneurs is that we continuously refined our business case and presentation based on feedback from investors. In retrospect, I would not have funded the pitch we started with, but it was a much better company and story after significant investor feedback — and our experience in presenting the story.
Keith Thomas
Posted by: Keith Thomas on December 5th, 2007 at 5:05 pm