Larry Cheng

My philosophy is you try and turn the long maybes into a quick no.

That saves you time.

Every firm has a fit.

It's the type of deal that's in their comfort zone.

You want to assess whether you're a good fit.

You could spend two months and it's not a good fit at the end.

So I try and make it easy for people to turn me down.

We might not be the right stage.

We might not be the right sector.

Maybe we don't have enough proof points.

Let me tell you all the reasons you can turn me down.

I will not take it personally.

Try and encourage the no, and that will save you time because...

Yeah, so let's go there.

When we started Volition Capital, we're a private equity firm specifically focused on growth, and we had to raise a fund.

And a fund is made up of different investors, very institutional, like university endowments, big charitable foundations, wealthy family offices, and so forth.

And when we first started this firm in 2010, it was two years post-financial crisis.

No one wanted to invest in a new emerging firm.

They wanted to even cut their allocations to this asset class and only stick with the firms that they knew.

And I put my head down.