Show Notes
"You should convince investors about the problem, not the product. Most founders are so excited about what they built that they forget to prove who's actually bleeding in that market." - Vahid Fakhr, Co-Founder and CEO of Evalyze
Vee spent ten years on the other side of the table in venture capital, reviewing more than a thousand pitch decks before he ever built anything himself.
The mistake he watched founders make over and over wasn't a bad product.
It was leading with the dashboard instead of the wound.
Convince someone the problem is real and painful first. The product comes after.
Then he switched sides.
Being a founder, he says, is a genuinely lonely job in a way being a VC never prepared him for.
As an investor, he could reject a hundred people a week with a generic line and move on.
As a founder, every rejection landed personally.
His advice on rejection: don't just close the laptop and walk away.
Ask for feedback. Ask to stay on an investor's radar with a monthly update.
Most founders treat a "no" as a dead end.
He treats it as the start of a relationship that might pay off eighteen months later, once the traction catches up to the pitch.
"Most of the time, rejection isn't about you. It's about that specific fund, their timing, their portfolio. Take the no, and build the relationship anyway."
More from Do Hard Things Podcast
"People don't change because you give them housing. People change because they're given community, accountability, purpose, work, and people around them who actually believe in them." - Moe EganPreston and Moe Egan came to The Other Side Village from opposite ends of the problem.Moe grew up in East Oakland, surrounded by addiction and crime, and became a lifelong addict and criminal himself. He went through six or seven recovery programs and graduated from every one. Each time he relapsed. Then came his seventh arrest, and the officer who cuffed him was his old football coach. The coach told him about Delancey Street, and facing San Quentin, he wrote a letter begging for help.Preston has spent 30 years in nonprofit work and never lived any of that. He's upfront about it. His problem is with the systems around the work, which measure beds filled and boxes checked instead of whether people reach long-term independence.Together they lead The Other Side Village, a permanent community built on peer accountability, where residents run social enterprises like a donut shop. Preston brings the strategy and Moe brings the lived experience, and neither is enough alone.Recently Moe took a group of people who spent decades on the street to New York. For some it was their first flight. On the way home they asked him how to get a passport."People don't fundamentally change when they feel temporary... When people know they have a permanent place in the community, they start thinking about next year instead of next week." - Preston L. Cochrane
"None of us engage perfectly with technology when we're overwhelmed or stressed. You shouldn't build a system that requires perfect engagement in order to be useful." - Ellie Gordon
"If there's something I can do and should do, then I have a responsibility to do it. That is what I signed up for when I became a nurse." - Melinda Yormick
"It didn't matter what I had accomplished before, what I had achieved, what awards I had. None of that mattered. It only mattered what I brought that day." - Mary Crafts
"Don't make an assumption, ask the question. Ask your senior people two things: what's slowing you down, and what would make you consider leaving. That pattern is your real priority list." - Alex Seiler