investors rarely tell you the real reason

a founder told me he has been six weeks from dead for three years straight.

not a figure of speech. his maximum runway at any point in three years has been about two months. right now it is six weeks. in that same stretch he grew five hundred percent year over year and built more traction than anyone else in his category.

three thousand investor conversations. seven years. three million dollars raised in total, biggest single check four hundred grand.

every no came back the same way. not enough traction.

he does not believe it, and after an hour with him neither do i. investors lost four billion dollars in his sector. every company founded in it over an eleven year window went bankrupt. the biggest exit got bought for the equipment, and the buyers made nothing. meanwhile the meeting after his was a software company that did ten million in six months.

so the no was never about his traction. it was about the memory of that four billion, and about whoever was sitting in the next chair.

investors mostly do not lie out of malice. they give you the polite version because the real reason has nothing to do with you, and telling you that is awkward.

here is the tell: if the feedback you keep hearing cannot be acted on, it is probably not the feedback.

what would you do differently if you knew the no was never about your numbers?