Last week Jason M. Lemkin pointed to Marc Benioff’s TechCrunch Disrupt interview where he told his starting up story – how he went up and down Sandhill Road and no one was interested in his vision of cloud and how no one without exception offered him any money. Its his friends in US and Japan who stood by him and help him build Sales Force which is now 100Bn in market cap.
Interestingly David Cummings also wrote on his experience of raising funds with Pardot (which was bought by SalesFore and now by analogy worth several billion dollars). So what did they tell the him?
“You’re based in a second tier city.
Your market isn’t big enough.
Your network effects aren’t strong.
You’ve never done this before.
They said they didn’t want to invest.
They said I wasn’t good enough.”
So what is the moral of the story? If you are certain that you have something that matters you will need to wade through the quicksand when nothing goes right and come out on the other side. Even if you fail you will know you did everything possible.
But while at it ensure you are not short changing yourself. Meet your customers, keep measurable milestones through this period and chip away.
Where I learnt this # 280
They Said I Wasn’t Good Enough https://davidcummings.org/2019/10/05/they-said-i-wasnt-good-enough/
