OLD SCRIPT DETECTED
“One VC passed, so the whole market has decided”
Try this response:
“One fund passed. The other six are still reading their own deal, not this one's inbox.”SEE THE PRACTICE
Build a response for this thought—and one move to prove it.
THE THOUGHT
“One VC passed, so the whole market has decided”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“One fund passed. The other six are still reading their own deal, not this one's inbox.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Privately list the funds still in conversation and write one line per fund naming what they specifically said last, without messaging anyone.
The Thursday no from Partner Three
- 01 / The 4:47pm reply from Partner Three
The email lands at 4:47pm: "Thanks for sharing, we're going to pass for now." It's the third fund this month, but this one had said the deck was 'genuinely exciting' on the call. You read the two-line rejection four times, looking for the real reason under the polite one. Then you open the shared deal tracker and stare at the six other funds still marked 'in diligence,' as if their silence just changed meaning too.
- 02 / Rewriting the whole raise around one line
One partner's pass becomes a translation exercise: if they saw it, the others will see it too, so the six pending conversations are already over, you just haven't gotten the emails yet. You draft a revised pitch angle at 9pm addressing an objection nobody but this one fund raised. The relief is immediate — doing something to the deck feels better than sitting with an unanswered inbox — but tomorrow's calls get pitched defensively, hedging against a doubt only one person voiced, and the fund that would've said yes to the original version now gets the nervous one.
- 03 / Naming the fund before naming the market
The catch is small: before typing 'they all think,' name the actual fund and the actual partner who passed. One name, one inbox, one Thursday. If the sentence only holds up when you swap in a single person's name, it was never a market reading — it was one reply, weighted like six.
TRACE · 01/04
How this script runs you
- A single pass email gets reread for the 'real' reason, as if it's a coded transmission the other funds already received.
- You revise the pitch deck the same night a rejection lands, even though the changes address an objection only one fund raised.
- Pending conversations with funds who haven't responded yet start to feel already lost, hours after one unrelated no.
SOURCE_LOCATED · 02/04
The hidden rule underneath
The Extinction Lens
If one qualified evaluator declines, their verdict silently overwrites everyone else's ongoing, independent judgment — as though funds are voting on the same ballot instead of running separate, unrelated diligence.
FORGING_REPLACEMENT · 03/04
Replacement lines (record these)
- One fund passed. The other six are still reading their own deal, not this one's inbox.
- A no from Thursday's call is data about Thursday's call, not a forecast for Friday's.
- Before I say 'the market thinks,' I name the one partner who actually wrote that sentence.
Generated per person in the app — these are the flavor, not your script. Yours is built from your exact words.
INSTALL · 04/04
The protocol, on one card
When I think
“One VC passed, so the whole market has decided”
I say
“One fund passed. The other six are still reading their own deal, not this one's inbox.”
Then I do one thing
Privately list the funds still in conversation and write one line per fund naming what they specifically said last, without messaging anyone.
STATUS: READY_TO_INSTALL
Wipe this thought4 minutes. Your voice. Free.
The wipe protocol
- Write the thought exactly as it plays: "One VC passed, so the whole market has decided". Word for word — the wipe targets the sentence, not the vibe.
- Trace the rule and the avoided action. What does this thought conveniently excuse you from doing?
- Record the replacement lines below in your own voice. Speak like you mean it — no recording, no install.
- Run the loop: play it every morning and night, log one proof action a day for 7 days.
Straight answers
Why does one VC's rejection feel like it applies to funds who haven't even responded yet?
The pending funds are unknowns, and an unknown paired with a fresh no gets filled in with the no's content by default — not because the two decisions are actually linked, but because one is loud and recent and the others are just silence.
Isn't it efficient to revise the deck right after a pass, in case the objection is universal?
Revising for one voiced objection before a second fund raises it means every remaining pitch gets shaped around a single reader's reaction, which can insert a hedge into calls where that concern was never going to come up.
What if two funds pass around the same time — doesn't that make it a real pattern?
Two data points from two separate processes can still be two separate reasons; the private list of who-said-what-specifically is what shows whether it's a repeated concern or two unrelated ones read as one.
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The research behind this script
- Are Entrepreneurs 'Touched with Fire?' — Freeman, Staudenmaier, Zisser & Andresen, Small Business Economics, 2019
- Bad Is Stronger Than Good — Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer & Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001
- Self-employed and stressed out? Stress management and entrepreneurs' mental health and performance — Frontiers in Psychology, 2024