This is not a problem limited to entrepreneurs. It's an ego problem and entrepreneurs have a lot of ego -- they have to -- so I can see that it is a big problem for VC's.

Have you ever tried telling someone they are wrong? It's not easy. Most people don't like to be wrong. Most people don't like knowing there is something about their character or their outlook on life or their past or their perceived future that is going to stop them from achieving their goals.

It can be a dramatically "dejecting" feeling to be told no. That is painful enough. To be told no because, you're too arrogant, or your vision isn't big enough, or you are going to burn out, or your family problems are going to get in the way or you aren't smart enough...

These are painful things to hear. As a self-preserving individual, the natural response is to recoil, to lash out at the messenger. We do it because we have to believe we will be successful... without that hope, that faith in ourselves, we may give up.

Add to that, the issue of internal motivation and external motivation. Say for example, a perceived lack of internal motivation is all the reason the VC needs to say no. It takes a lot of internal motivation to see a company through and if a VC notices there isn't enough, that's also an indicator the entrepreneur is going to attack the VC for trying to help them understand the personal changes in their philosophy of the world that may be required to make the company succeed. The VC is an external factor. For the externally motivated, there is something wrong with the world -- in this case, that's the VC. It's very difficult for a person to even understand the concept of internal vs. external motivation, much less change it, so it's probably a waste of time to even mention it. It just won't do the entrepreneur any good.

I'm not pro at this by any stretch of the imagination, but I have conversations all the time with people who have some great idea or a patent on the way or something like that and they don't have the desire to understand that none of that stuff matters. It's a lot of work too and it takes a lot of reading and experience and research that person just hasn't done yet.

Sometimes in a situation like that, little clues and signs tell me, this just isn't going to work. Just from the little experience I have gotten from people as a software developer, it's kind of the same. They have this great idea to do blah blah blah and they don't even know that there are already 5 of those websites out there. Or you can tell just by the way they formulate sentences that they aren't going to "get it."

Sometimes you can tell they have been told in the past and they just refuse to believe it, so you don't bother telling them again. You can tell they are driven by the hope that one day it is going to succeed. For them it's about that idea succeeding rather than the company succeeding or they themselves succeeding. Sometimes you have to start over. If they have to start over -- in their mind -- they are a failure and who wants to be a failure?

That's hard news to hear and some people don't react so well to it. I would say the majority of people don't react well to it. Unfortunately for those few people who will react well to it, they get passed up. They don't get the good advice they need to improve and move beyond the problems because of the negativity received by all those who lashed out at the teacher in the past.

I suppose that's the issue, not everyone is a good teacher and even fewer are good students. If you are going to start a startup, especially your first startup, you are going to have to learn a lot and be taught a lot and not let your ego get in the way of your success. You gotta have ego, arrogance and all of that stuff but those things are tools just like any other part of human character and you have to know how to use them appropriately.

Sometimes knowing how to use a tool appropriately takes experience and training and some people believe that comes naturally. If it isn't, they are less than perfect or whatever.

Remember Kill Bill? If you haven't seen it and want to, then stop reading here, because I am going to spoil some of it for pedagogical purposes. Anyway, there's a part where the old guy took the student to the teacher in the mountains. That teacher knew the 5 step punch trick and Uma Thurman's character didn't like him at first, but she stuck it out and she learned a lot. She checked her ego at the door and because of that she learned some very valuable martial arts skills.

The other student with one eye, she wasn't such a good student. She had a lot of ego and was determined to "show up the teacher." She wanted to show that she was better than the teacher, rather than take the opportunity to learn from someone widely regarded as the best. All of us in the audience of course saw from the outside that she was only hurting herself, but would you be the one to tell her she was too arrogant to be the best herself? She'd probably kill you with one punch.