15+ Ways a Venture Capitalist Says “No”

15+ Ways a Venture Capitalist Says “No” – Unsupervised Methods

Ways that VC’s “no”s are disguised as “maybe”s. It catalogs common investor responses—silence, delays, “find a lead,” “partner is out of town,” “too early,” “not a theme,” “too busy,” “talk to my associate,” “valuation too high,” “tranches”—and translates each into the incentive-aligned truth: VCs optimize for their own option value and reputation.

Default rule: if there’s no dated next step initiated by them, assume “no.”