A speaker recounts a harsh investor rejection during an early pitch which prompted reflection and a strategic shift: growth must be prioritized from day one to compete with entrenched incumbents. The speaker resolves to learn growth (despite lacking prior experience) and treat it as essential in a crowded, hyper-competitive market.
Chapters
I'm in my third pitch in. I get to the very end of the pitch feeling pretty good about myself. And the investor pauses a little bit and then just says, that has to be the worst pitch, worst idea I have ever heard. Not only are you trying to go against incumbents, you're going against incumbents that have massive distribution. You are never going to succeed. And before I could even respond, he hangs up. So I'm there sitting there thinking about it. Before I could really get down on myself. I kind of just internalize this feeling that maybe he's right. Maybe something about what he's saying is actually correct. I started thinking about if we're going to succeed in this category, we're going to really have to think about growth. From the very beginning. This category is going to be really, really hard to break into. So we really made this sort of promise to ourselves that as we continue to build, growth is going to be critically important. I don't come from a growth background, so if I can learn growth, anybody can learn growth. And I think especially in this sort of market, hyper competitive, oftentimes very crowded, it's going to be essential.