The power of saying No.

06Oct10

In a world with too much noise, people, distractions, desires, information it becomes of the utmost important to say no. Whether it be the tenth red bull, the one awesome new feature that will turn your product into gold, or the business development deal that you just have to do, saying no is sometimes the only solution.

There is a great article on Fred Wilson’s blog regarding the roles of a CEO.  In the article the roles are essentially boiled down to:

1.  Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders.

2.  Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company.

3.  Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.

There really is a #4 here. Saying no to most things. The word no really has an implied “hmm?” in it. By hmm, i mean the ability to look at an opportunity, verify it’s influence on reaching some end goal, and then when action is required usually you are required to say no. Let’s take a look at what happens when you say yes.

Company A: Hey, let’s partner with you!

You: Yay!

Company B -Z : Hey, let’s partner with you!

You: OMG YAY!

Engineer: Wait, what.

You: It’s raining partners = good for business!

Engineer B: I have this awesome idea

Engineer C-Z: I have an awesome-R idea.

You: Let’s build them all, we’ll be so cool!

Even if you were able to build all of that, you would have the shittiest product on the Earth. Focus on specific targets and goals and execute on those.

Say no to everything else.



One Response to “The power of saying No.”

  1. 1 Amrita Mathur

    You couldn’t have said it better Nikhil! Focus is everything.
    Often we get carried away by the multitude of business opportunities presented to us and as a person in marketing and sales it becomes very difficult to ignore those opportunities. But it is imperative, especially for early-stage companies, to cherry pick those opportunities that represent perfect fit.


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