[raffi]

shrug I used to be part of the "please give me permission to start a business by letting me into your seed program" crowd. My company made it to the final round for a program and the end feedback was they didn't think we could deliver on what we were building.

At first, I took it as le insult. An insult against my mad pr0grammer skills.

In hindsight, I look at it as: my technology may have been OK, but it wasn't astounding enough to qualify as a revolution in the area and lead a big stampede to my door. It was a harder problem area (NLP). Something simpler with the same amount of persistence and execution may have led to much greater results.

In hindsight I appreciate the honesty. They saw it before I did.

The challenge is, people aren't ready to hear certain things until they're ready to hear it.

[rexreed]

So are you saying you would rather have not heard the honest, but negative feedback at all? It sounds like in hindsight you are grateful for the honesty. Would n-years of lying have helped you any more? Would you have the insight you have now if you were simply lied to and told "great team - show me more traction", when they really think "gosh, what a sucky team"?