Inside Scoop

Every startup founder gets a lot of rejections — even the founders of Google did, so chances are, you will too. If you want your startup to survive, you’ve got to learn to deal with rejection well.

In The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, John Battelle recounts the long round of rejections Google went through, as they tried to “license the technology to a major player [to] avoid the risks of a startup”: (pp.83-4)

As far as I can tell, this happens to literally everyone who starts a big-idea business, or indeed tries to do anything remarkable. Seriously, read a good biography of any successful person — sporting heroes, best-selling authors, movie stars, historical leaders, famous musicians and noted explorers, as well as startup founders — and you’ll hear about the setbacks they overcame to become successful.

If you’re going to succeed, you not only need to deal with rejection; you have to work it to your advantage.

More from the Google story:

No doubt, those companies that refused to license Google’s technology for a mere million or so are kicking themselves now.

Whenever someone passes on your company, keep that story in mind — especially if they tell you to “go pound sand”. Instead of letting the odd opinionated jerk* get you down, use them to motivate you even more instead. Tell yourself that one day, they’ll kick themselves for passing on you. Then get straight back to work on making it happen. (And if they did have valid points about what’s wrong with your product, fix them fast.)

Success is by far the best revenge.

* And really, it is just a few opinionated jerks who give startup investors a bad name. In my experience, people who can greenlight huge projects can afford to be polite. They have wealth, power and a certain notoriety; they don’t need to crush up-and-comers to make themselves feel good. The very few investor-types I’ve encountered who behave discourteously are the ones who can’t afford to lose, i.e. the ones who don’t yet feel like they’ve made it… and you probably don’t want to deal with them anyway.