Investors don’t validate your startup — users do.

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

You don't need every investor to like what you're building. You just need a few of them to believe. The reality is that no matter how great your product is, how much traction you have, investors are going to reject you, and that's okay. In fact, it puts you in great company.

Here's a great example: Envision. Envision is a medical device startup for cancer detection, and it was started by Sir Bisarna, who's a YC group partner. Today, when Serbia started building Envision, she was rejected more than 50 times by investors to just get the first money for the company.

The way that she was able to convince someone to write that first check and to help her get this company started was she told them she was going to bet on herself and take no salary for the first two years if the investor was really into betting on them. That was for a $25,000 check.

Her first round of funding for the company was only $500,000, but she got it done even though she got rejected over and over again. Since then, the company was acquired for $275 million.

The 7 BEST Tax Write-Offs when Investing in Real Estate!

Mohnish Pabrai: How to Invest in an Overvalued Market (2021)

View All

The Team Leader Steps Down | Explorer

Hi. On a remote peak in Myanmar, a team of elite climbers is unraveling just as they are poised to attempt the summit. “But what I’m hearing from you guys is that you don’t trust me on the rope.” “We’re just worried about the safety of the team. There’l…

Emily Weiss on the Insights That Grew Glossier - With Amy Buechler at the Female Founders Conference

I am Aimee Beger from Y Combinator, and I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Emily Weiss here. Thank you so much for joining us. Emily: Thank you for having me! So, did you see everybody? So, Emily, you founded two brands that have a pretty beaut…

Meet the Founder of Stoicism | ZENO OF CITIUM

We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say. Zeno of Citium, around 300 BC, founded the Stoic school of philosophy. He published a list of works on ethics, physics, logic, and other subjects, including his most famous work: Zeno’…

Why You Should or Should Not Work at a Startup by Justin Kan

In a moment, I’m gonna introduce our first keynote speaker, Justin Kahn. Justin is the founder of three YC companies. He is now running a company called Atrium, which we’re gonna hear about later this afternoon. But before that, he was the founder of Just…

Dihybrid cross and the Law of Independent Assortment | High school biology | Khan Academy

In this video, we’re going to build on our understanding of Mendelian genetics and Punnett squares by starting to think about two different genes. So we’re going back to the pea plant, and we’re going to think about the gene for pea color and the gene for…

Is Most Published Research Wrong?

In 2011, an article was published in the reputable “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”. It was called “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect,” or, in other words, proof that peopl…

Investors don’t validate your startup — users do.

More Articles