What to do when an investor doesn’t like your product (Oversubscribed Weekly #10)

What do you do when a prospective investor just doesn’t like your product?

When he was first raising money, Brian Rudolph of Banza encountered this problem multiple times. Banza is pasta made from chickpeas that’s healthier and higher-protein than traditional pasta. But when your product is a staple food, everyone has an opinion. And some investors just didn’t like Brian’s pasta.

In that case, Brian says, the best course of action is to accept that it’s just not a match. It’s often our natural tendency to try to convince everyone we meet of the merits of our product. But if an investor has an instinctive negative reaction to your product, you’re probably never going to convince them.

If an investor doesn’t believe in the potential of where the product is or can go, it’s probably not a fit. Better to just let it go.

Brian Rudolph

Tweets worth reading this week

From Arlan Hamilton and Ryan Hoover, a good example of what not to do when sending a cold email. When reaching out to a stranger, being straightforward is always the best approach.

From Bill Gurley, a response to this New York Times article and a good reminder that there’s more than one way to grow a business. We focus a lot on fundraising in Oversubscribed, but raising venture capital isn’t the right choice for every business. The most important fundraising question to consider is always, should I even be raising money at all?

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