There Are Three Types of ‘Nos’ — One of Them Isn’t Worth Listening To
Getting a ‘no’ hurts. It really hurts when you’re looking for a yes.
Of course, we know that behind every rejection, there’s a valuable lesson.
But that helps little when you feel like being dragged back to square one.
Here’s the thing:
All no’s aren’t created equal, even if they’re coming from someone important — a person you see as an expert or whose opinion you value.
There are three types of ‘Nos’.
One of them isn’t worth listening to.
As Ried Hoffman explained in his book “Masters of Scale”: [. . .] some ‘Nos’ count more than others. ‘Substantial nos’ can revise your idea. ‘Skeptical nos’ can force you to rethink the size of the opportunity. These are ‘Nos’ worth listening to and learning from. But then, there are ‘lazy nos’ which you need to dismiss and move on from — quickly.”
The book is full of stories of how remarkably successful people noticed overlooked opportunities, what they did with those ideas and learned despite setbacks.
One of those stories is of Tristan Walker.
Walker found it absurd that in a world where there are more people with a non-Caucasian heritage, most personal care and beauty products are still designed for Caucasian people.
He wanted to build a company to fix that.
But despite having a massive addressable market, a brilliant product, and a big opportunity, all he got was an endless series of rejections.
It helps to know that by the time Walker started pitching his company, he was already an Entrepreneur in Residence at Andreessen Horowitz (his job, literally, was to come up with business ideas) and had successful careers at Twitter and Foursquare.
Walker explains that you need to pay attention to when your audience stops paying attention to your pitch:
“I had a slide in there — I think it was like slide 14 — where I talked about Proactiv, the acne system, as a good analogy to what we’re trying to do. It’s the difference between Gillette and Bevel, as Neutrogena and Proactiv; it’s a system that solves a very important issue.
And this VC looked at me — and I’ll never forget this — he said, ‘Tristan, I’m not sure issues related to razor bumps, shaving, or irritation are as profound an issue for people as acne.’
At which point, I said, ‘I understand what you’re saying, but all you have to do is get on the phone with ten Black men, and eight of them would say, This is a permanent thing I have to deal with. All you have to do is get on the phone with ten white men, four of them would have said the same thing. Could have done it for women too, and you would get the same ratios.’”
Tristan knew at that moment that the VC’s comment had nothing to do with the quality of his idea — he was simply unwilling to acquire the context necessary to understand it.
“That’s just laziness — and at that point, I can’t fix that.”
— Tristan Walker
A carefully considered rejection is a gift. A ‘lazy no’ is not.
Seek out carefully considered rejections.
You can do this by paying extra attention to people who:
- ask difficult questions,
- show genuine interest in learning about you and your idea, and
- take the time to understand your point of view and articulate theirs.
A carefully considered rejection is a gift — it helps you discover new possibilities and makes your ideas more resilient.
Pay attention to your sceptics as well.
Listening to them can give you a new point of view. It can help you refine your idea and improve your communication.
Pay no attention to people who aren’t open to accepting new ideas — people who’re quick to judge and reject without putting in the effort to understand your point of view.
This quote from Hoffman sums it up better than I can:
“When the quality of the questions drops, the real conversation is over — the rest is noise.”
Walker finally got funding from Andreessen Horowitz, and Bevel hit the market in 2016.
In 2018, Walker & Company was acquired by P&G.
(The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but according to Crunchbase, Walker & Co. had raised more than $33.3 million in funding just a few years prior.)
P&G Beauty CEO Alex Keith in a statement; “The combination of Walker & Company’s deep consumer understanding, authentic connection to its community and unique, highly customized products and P&G’s highly-skilled and experienced people, resources, technical capabilities and global scale will allow us to further improve the lives of the world’s multicultural consumers.”
Know what kind of ‘nos’ you’re getting and which ones to take seriously.
