Tenacity

Entrepreneurs are a pretty diverse group, but they all tend to be tenacious.  They don’t take “no” for an answer easily.  In any entrepreneurial effort the naysayers usually exceed the supporters.  Sometimes those naysayers are very smart people that know a lot about entrepreneurship.  Companies that make a business of investing in start-ups frequently decline to invest money in start-ups that later become huge successes.  Not surprisingly, these investment companies don’t talk about their “misses” very often, but I recently found a website where one of titans of the venture capital (VC) industry lists some of the firms that it “passed” on.  The list is eye-popping:  Cisco, eBay, FedEx (passed on it seven times), Intel, Google, and PayPal.  Needless to say, this VC firm couldn’t have been more wrong about the potential of these companies.  So, the “judging” of business plans is a pretty tough task that even the experts get wrong.

In a few days we’ll hear from the judges about the executive summaries.  It’s possible that some entrants won’t be invited to submit a full business plan.  Notice that I said it’s possible—I haven’t talked to any of the judges about the executive summaries so I don’t have any insight on their decisions.  Does that mean that the executive summary was no good?  Absolutely not; the guidelines for the competition are pretty strict as far as growth and target market are concerned.  The executive summary might be the start of a great business, just not one as big as called for in IdeaWF.

Should the entrepreneur give up if they aren’t invited to submit a full business plan?  No!  You are still encouraged to attend the training sessions, work on your plan with the SBDC, and try to get the business started.  Maybe one of the judges’ comments is just what you needed to see an even bigger opportunity.  Those that attended the orientation sessions hopefully recall that the goal is that everyone wins in IdeaWF – some will just win more than others. 

And when you launch that business and it becomes a big success, you and FedEx (and others.) will have something in common – an expert will have “passed” on your idea!