when VCs pass on a fundraise, it's easy to take it personally. but my advice for founders is to keep your chin up, execute the hell out of your business, and come back in 6 months to prove em wrong. many of our top companies in @speedrun have been reapplicants who derisked every concern we had and proved us wrong - and we couldn't be happier to be working with them today =) a framework I like to point founders to is the onion theory of risk (h/t to pmarca) - essentially every start-up is a big ball of risks, and as a start-up progresses it peels away each layer of risk one by one. for example, an early-stage start-up might have: - founder risk - does the start-up have the right founding team? Is there strong founder-market fit? is the team complete? - product risk - can the team build the product? does the product work as intended? - market risk - is there a market for the product? will users pay for it? will those users stick around? - competition risk - are there other companies already doing this? how does the start-up differentiate / defend itself? etc etc when an investor passes, it's usually because there are too many layers of risk at present for their taste, and the best thing you can do is to keep peeling the onion and then come back later on note this is also why it's important to run a wide process and talk to as many investors as possible. different investors have varying taste / risk tolerance - and what's too risky for one might be the sweetspot for another also there's inherent randomness in the fundraise process itself - you might have caught an investor right after they had a fight with their spouse that morning, or maybe the investor had a bad experience with another company in your market or another founder who kind of looks like you etc. you can't control these things tldr - so when a VC says no, don't read too much into it. it's a pass on your company at this particular moment in time, and it also might have been due to something entirely random. instead - stay focused, stay hungry - keep on executing and prove all the naysayers wrong!