There are a million ways investors tell us “NO!” that sound an awful lot like “Yes!”

The reason investors hesitate to give any Founder are hard “No” is that they don’t want to offend a Founder that may become successful later on – when they want to invest again.

Therefore investors offer a few camouflaged “No” responses:

“We’d love to invest when you hit X milestone.” That means “No”. Any investor will be interested to talk once you’ve gained traction because that’s what investors look for in any possible deal. That doesn't mean they intend on investing, it just means they would be open to looking at it again.

***“This isn’t right for us now.” *** That means “No.” Investors don’t sit around hoping interesting deals “become right for them someday”. They either want to invest in deals right now or they probably never will.

“We think this is really interesting.” That’s not a hard “No” but it’s often close to it. Being “really interesting” doesn’t mean squat. Unless the investor follows that by saying “And we want to invest” they are basically just saying “Cool idea, good luck to you!”

Unless the investor is saying “We want to invest right now” then the answer is generally “No”. It’s frustrating to be sure, but we need to make sure we don’t rely on false positives in our fundraise.