How I Learned to Handle Rejection

I got a lot of rejection in grades 1-8.
The teachers believed that I was a poor
student. In some ways, I was.

If only from teacher lounge gossip, grade
by grade the teachers assumed I was a poor
student.

Then in grades 9-12 I learned my main way
to defend myself from rejection:

Main Way: Know what the heck I'm doing,
have some solid ways to know I'm right,
and otherwise stay out of sight so that I
won't be a target.

So, right, in the 9th grade I discovered
high school math. So, I did well: (A) As
some aptitude tests showed, I have some
math talent. (B) I found that when my
math was correct, I was 100% immune from
criticism or rejection. So, I made sure
my math was correct. It worked great!

Did the same in high school chemistry and
physics. Worked great again!

So, when I was right, the teachers were
forced to give me credit and just swallow
their surprise, disgust, the evidence that
they were wrong about my work, whatever.
They didn't like to swallow that, but they
had to and did.

I still couldn't expect to please the
English literature teachers so gave up on
them and English literature and settled
for grades of gentleman C.

Lesson for Employees: As an employee, the
Main Way can be dangerous because having
such solid evidence of being right can be
threatening to others. Others don't like
to have swallow that there is solid
evidence that they are wrong. So, as an
employee, might have to back off on having
such solid evidence; or if have the
evidence, then don't let it be known
unless it is needed in some unusual
situation.

In grad school, my department Chair was a
straight A, rigid type of guy. His
research wasn't much, but no doubt in
courses he made lots of As.

Well, soon he didn't like me. Sorry guy:
In a course I found a question, got a
reading course to study it, and in two
weeks had a solid solution with a nice,
surprising, new theorem. The work
definitely looked publishable and was --
later I published the work with no
problems. From then on in grad school, I
had a halo -- could do no wrong. Why?
I'd done some rock solid, original
research that any of the faculty members
would have been thrilled to have done.
So, the Chair had to swallow.

For entrepreneurship, try to use the Main
Way again: So, have some relatively solid
reasons to know you are right.

Next, don't expect anyone in business
writing equity checks to accept,
understand, or even consider your solid
reasons. Why not: Because in all their
experience, they've nearly never seen or
at least have never accepted any solid
reasons as relevant.

Elsewhere in our civilization, such solid
reasons are both necessary and nearly
sufficient.

E.g., at one time before spy satellites,
the US wanted an airplane that would fly
about 2000 miles without refueling across
the USSR high enough (80,000+ feet) and
fast enough (Mach 3+) not to get shot down
and take lots of high resolution pictures.
So, Kelly Johnson at Lockheed's Skunk Works
came to the CIA with an armload of
blueprints of solid reasons. He was
right, and he, Lockheed, and the CIA all
knew he was right. The result was the
SR-71, as at

http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...

and it worked just as planned and never
got shot down. No doubt.

Same for GPS and a lot of other US
national security projects.

Indeed, given the solid presentations on
paper, nearly always the rest of the
projects were low risk and high payoff.

So, for entrepreneurship, use the Main
Way. As Kelly Johnson did, have some
solid reasons to know you are right.

Then accept that none of the equity
funders will pay any attention at all to
your solid evidence.

So, then, also, you should pay no serious
attention to their rejections. Bluntly,
they don't know what the heck they are
doing. Instead, they are essentially just
throwing darts, in a poorly lit bar, after
several beers, and occasionally hit the
bull's eye.

And there's a much bigger reason to f'get
about the equity funders: It has become
fully clear that for a successful project,
say, building another Google, that the
equity funders have no idea at all just
how to do that. E.g., it happens only
about once each 10 years, and to the
equity funders it's all just luck and
never by solid design like the SR-71.

So, if your project could be as successful
as Google, or even worth $10+ B, then you
have to accept that none of the equity
funders have even as much as a weak little
hollow hint of a tiny clue how to do that
or how evaluate your project to do that.
So, their rejection means nothing very
solid about your project, is just noise
from incompetents.

"Incompetents"? Sure: Could count with
shoes on all the information technology VCs
(bio-medial VCs are commonly very
different) who are qualified for a
technical slot in a startup, for CTO or
CIO, for a tenure track slot in a STEM
field in a good research university, for
an NSF grant, as an NSF problem sponsor,
who as sole author have published a STEM
field research paper in a good journal,
etc. Bluntly, in technology, they
incompetent. So, their opinion or
rejection of a technology project means no
more than the outcome of a dice roll.

So, pick a project you can bring to nice
profitability with just your own
checkbook, and then do that. Millions of
US Main Street businesses -- auto repair,
auto body repair, grass mowing, pizza
carry-out, etc. -- do that and where
there is more capex then needed for, say,
a first Web server and router.