No Such Thing As a Sure Thing

So back in June I met a great guy who runs a large investment fund as is very well connected in the VC world. I gave him an initial presentation and he was blown away. To the point where he said we were a sure thing to get funded and he gave us a month's worth of money upfront to bridge us until he closed the funding. He further promised half of the overall money himself and he had locked in the rest within days.

OK so Mr. DT's (see prior post) reticence to actually get our message straight hurt...A LOT...but I am here to tell you that NOBODY should EVER lock in to one investment group EVER. I got a lot of advice in June that I should be working with as many groups as possible just in case something went wrong. I, being SO SMART, thought that locking in with Mr. Sure Thing (ST) would be the best for our relationship and the company. Idiot (me, not Mr. ST)

Look, Mr. ST was just doing his proper diligence (although he told me originally that such diligence was not needed...) and these experts ripped us apart (blood pressure rising...grrrr...Mr. DT...). So naturally Mr. ST became Mr. Somewhat Sure Thing and now he is Mr. Good Luck With Your Venture.

That's right folks, Mr. ST has essentially gone from "I will have your money in a month" to "When can I get my original loan back?" in a mere 4 months. Better yet, he actually agrees that our ill-formed original explanation caused our issues, he agrees that the new message overcame those issues and he completely believes in our invention...and none of that matters. In his words "it just took so much to get to this point, I have lost my appetite for the venture"

From his point of view, there are literally thousands of great ideas and he is being constantly bombarded with the Next Big Thing. If he misses out on one here or there, so what? He will not miss us nearly as much as we will miss him.

So now I, having realized yet again my level of ignorance, have started all over again. This time I am going after multiple groups of investors. I have sounded my message off of colleagues to make sure it makes sense and I am ready to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

Sigh.