YCombinator VC Paul Graham argues that the current pandemic has exposed politicians that talk confidently about things they do not understand: see the post her about credibility in corona times.
- He is right
- Most of these politicians probably did not knowingly lie, I assume they believed they understood things, that’s probably a key asset of being a politician
When it comes to pitching to investors, credibility is crucial, and you can only loose it once. Investors will have to work with you for a long time, they don’t have time to check everything you do, so as soon as one incident gets exposed where it appeared that they cannot trust you, that’s it.
So you get a question you do not know the answer to:
- If it is factual, give the answer after you consulted with someone who knows, maybe after a short delay
- If you truly don’t know, say so, with an approach how you mitigate the uncertainty.
Bluffing an answer is not the right thing to do here.
So as a startup CEO, you can still be highly confident that your idea is going to work, and keep credibility while admitting that you do not know everything, and that you might actually be wrong.
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash