Ups and downs of entrepreneurship

As we head toward the launch of our M&A intelligence platform, my confidence has been up and down. I want to mark this here so I remember how hard it is when I look back at it later.

Two negative comments stick out over the last year from folks in this space telling me I'll fail:

• One who I pitched on joining First Look wrote back saying they're "the worst leads on the planet." Of course, he hasn't seen the leads, and he probably only looked at the sales page for 30 seconds, and I'd had negative (man-splain-y) interactions with him before so I expected his response might be along those lines. But it was still a stinger of a comment!

• Another founder I respect told me "media people can't build database companies." I look forward to proving him wrong on that =)

At the same time, I had a call with a female founder this week who sold a business with a model that was very similar to ours. She gave me a huge vote of confidence, plus lots of ideas for how to practically move forward.

She was in a similar spot to where I am now when she was also two years in, and that's when she brought in a salesperson-turned-co-founder who helped her get the product across the finish line and scale for the next bunch of years. I've been thinking about whether this is a step I might take in the next 6-12 months.

Overall, I'm still flying high on the M&A platform concept, and as we get closer to being ready to add paying users to the platform, I'm having little bouts of clarity that all add up.