When Someone Tells You No…

“When someone tells you no, what they really mean is ‘not yet’.”       -Giveit100 Founder Karen Cheng

Life and start-ups seem to go hand in hand. From the chaos of deadlines to meet, bills to pay and anxieties to overcome, there’s a lot that we can all learn from entrepreneurs.

GiveIt100 founder Karen Cheng had a brilliant idea. I don’t know what her background is (but I’d love to- Karen, if you’re reading this I’m up for an interview anytime), but somewhere along the line she decided to learn how to dance. Literally.

GiveIt100’s Karen Cheng

She spent a year meticulously documenting her foray into dance in tiny 10-second sized nuggets of frustration, laughter and joy. Nothing big. Mostly just her breaking out some newbie moves in the comfort of her San Francisco living room for months on end. Motions that most of us would be too embarrassed to show the world.

But not Karen. She showed the world every day her progress. And by the time the year was coming to a close, she was seamlessly swaying across the subway tunnel in a manner that seems unfathomable given the recollection of her previous boundaries just a year before.

Along with her startup partner  who makes lots of cameos in her daily videos (I don’t know who the hell would want to devote so much time and energy to something that’s far from a sure shot with anyone they didn’t love… those two have something to teach us all clearly), Karen went to work trying to develop GiveIt100.com into a viable business. Then she grappled with ways to draw in more viewers. And then subscribers to monetize it.

Eager to take the startup to the next level, she laboriously asked for help from 500Startups, yCombinator, AngelPad… you name the accelerator, she tried. But nothing but rejection came back. And Karen’s face throughout this process too reflected the heart ache, the uncertainty, the questioning, the anxiety that we all feel from time to time when we give ourselves fully to something that matters to us not knowing the outcome. But they kept trying, and kept learning.

She plugged away, spending her time making GiveIt100 better. Growing it. Cultivating a bigger and bigger following (it has half a million followers on YouTube currently and I suspect a nice sum of subscribers). Until one day her inbox sent the reward she was hoping for.

Her little startup was accepted into the accelerator 500Startups– and along with that fancy acknowledgement of her hard work and dedication came a slew of practical goodies like business advice, funding opportunities, collaboration and endless optimism from others who have been in Karen’s shoes.

“Startups are hard. But if you believe in what you’re doing, keep going. It’s worth it. It’s totally uncertain what the future holds, but I’m just really grateful for this opportunity,” says Karen in the video that ROCKED MY WORLD TODAY (check it out- you won’t be sorry).

Well said, Karen. Well said.