Startup Funding: Why Investors Keep Saying NO To Your BIG Idea | Ooshma Garg and Danielle Morrill



Think you’re onto something BIG, and surprised you’re receiving so many NO’s from investors?

It can really make you second guess yourself, and shake your confidence…

… but it shouldn’t!

Receiving a LOT of NO’s is natural.

You may be tempted to listen to the feedback after receiving some NO’s and think you just need to launch your product, change your business model, or grow your customer base, and then you’ll be more attractive to investors.

Guess again.

The reason you receive for the NO and the feedback you get may not be aligned.

Why?

Because at the end of the day, investors are human. They don’t want to hurt the feeling of a first time founder, and don’t want to seem rude in case they want to invest later.

Yes they just might invest later.

So how can you tell what is really going on?

Well that’s what we’re going to debunk in today’s episode of Build! To help us out I’ve invited Ooshma Garg who is the CEO and Founder of Gobble ( and Danielle Morrill who is the CEO and Founder of Mattermark ( They’ve both recently become investment partners at XFactor Ventures ( an investment firm that’s focused on investing in female founders and mixed-gender teams.

We’re going to help get comfortable with receiving NOs and deciphering what they really mean.

You’ll learn:

– How Danielle and Ooshma learned to keep their spirits up despite all the NOs they received

– How to be politely persistent with investors who won’t bother taking a meeting with you

– The various tests investors put first time founder through

– How to maintain a relationship with an investors even after they say NO

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ( and Pivotal Tracker ( San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (

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2 Comments on “Startup Funding: Why Investors Keep Saying NO To Your BIG Idea | Ooshma Garg and Danielle Morrill”

  1. Fantastic advice. 2 questions:
    1) How do you incentivize and propel faster responses/meeting times on email?
    2) And what transition phrases do you use to ask whether they're interested in investing? Is it as blatant as "so you want to be a part of this round?" or more subtle like "want to join our team?"

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