Rejection Thoughts.
Make a rejection something great.
First I want to say that rejection is hard.
When I applied to colleges, I got rejected by a billion places. Literally a billion. A few said yes, but as a 17 year old, I actually decided that I wasn’t ready for college (partially due to the voluminous rejections). I mustered up the courage to tell my parents, and they ended up taking it well. Their last words were, “But you have to do SOMETHING.”
I ended up choosing to play professional tennis for a year, a year that very much defined my life: established my harmony with Australians, my confidence in my ability to better myself, and my steadfast independence. I was able to take a whole lot of rejection and turn it into something that made me understand myself better. I tend to think about that when we reject companies who apply to the Boost VC program.
As we continue to go through the interview process for Boost VC’s Tribe 12 applications, I’m reminded of how great people are. We have done roughly 70 interviews and have another 30 to go, and every one of them are trying to change the world for the better. Humans are great.
As much as I love every builder, we do have to think about what fits for the Boost VC network and this session, applications have been harder than ones in the past. I feel that the quality is extremely high, but we can’t invest in everyone, so this friction point has led us to really have to think about what makes Boost VC, and what rejection really means to us.
Boost VC likes to look at our rejections as a way to start a relationship with founders. We make sure to give feedback to every team that gets an interview (we use to do this for everyone, but the numbers got to high for us to scale to every rejection). By giving feedback we start a dialogue, it also gives us a data point on where the company is today. It gives us a chance to track the founders as they continue to work on the product, and hopefully as they build progress we get to stay updated.
We have accepted tons of founders who were previously rejected in earlier tribes: Etherscan and Wyre are the two that come to my mind off the top of my head.
We hope that a rejection from Boost VC is one of many rejections on your way toward bettering yourself and your business.
By Adam Draper
I ponder as a VC.
It's a quick one minute read to make you think, smile, or laugh.
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