Founders Asking For Feedback
I have noticed that founders generally want feedback after being denied further investment consideration. However, most of the time, I find that despite what seems like an honest desire to use this as a learning experience - they try to use the feedback as a platform for exercising a rebuttal and how I got it wrong.
I generally give pretty direct feedback; it is a jump ball if it is taken gracefully. I don't have a crystal ball and can't predict the future; however, I see hundreds of opportunities a year, so there is a little bit of pattern recognition going on. Everyone thinks they are a fringe case. My experience, however, is that is only true in the founder's mind.
Great post David
It’s hard as a founder to get a “pass” from an investor you think is a good fit. It’s even harder when the investor/VC has their thesis posted that reads like the founder had written it it’s so close to your product and market yet you still hear “pass”. It also becomes clear in fundraising that because of the volume of deals some VCs see they likely didn’t give your deal more than a quick glance and you can read between the lines when they pass that they didn’t really look closely at your deal. Perhaps one can say that’s because of a poor deck, I’d suggest it can also be lack of time, distractions, and a host of others that don’t get the founder the look they hoped for and could be argued they deserve and received a blanket pass. In that case could you blame a founder for a little tenacity in revisiting things? You’d expect them to do so with a customer target if you’d invested right?
When one invests personally, grows and leads a startup, especially once you have some traction, a passion and perhaps some ego comes into play so rejection is hard.
One of the things I respect about you is the feedback you provided me when you passed on our deal and the time spent pointing us to other potential investors. Ghosting, it happens often, helps no one, yet a bit of support helps the founder and helps the VCs reputation. The key as you point out is the founder ready to listen and take action or just using the request for feedback as an opp to re-pitch. I think in our follow up discussion I used the term, “throw rocks at me” re where I can improve. I looked at it as you’d already passed but we’d done 3 calls so you probably saw some of weaknesses and strengths perhaps I can learn from or refine.
Thanks for posting this today