How comfortable are you with rejection?

I’m working on a new column I’ll be writing for The New Stack about entrepreneurship for engineers, and have been chatting with startup founders, established company leaders and people with a history working in startups in a business role. It’s already fascinating.

One topic that came up recently was the idea of rejection, and I thought it was interesting enough to mention on the blog. Most founders I work with are very, very good engineers. In more than a couple cases, they’ve gone straight from college to in-house roles at big tech firms to starting a company. Which means starting the company might be the first time a founder experiences serious rejection.

Being ok with rejection is a muscle you have to develop, and most founders do (side note: if you didn’t realize, I used to be a journalist, and one of the advantages of that experience was getting pretty used to rejection of all flavors).

Here’s something else, though: The tighter, more specific your positioning, the less rejection you’ll likely face. There will still be some, but you’ll be pitching / selling something more relevant and tailored to the people you talk to. You’ll see more people interested in talking in the first place and higher percentages of those initial conversations turning into deals.