Best "no" conversation I ever heard. Us: how did you like our pitch? VC: we're a no, because we don't trust your unit economics. Us: fair enough. Could you p

Best "no" conversation I ever heard. Us: how did you like our pitch? VC: we're a no, because we don't trust your unit economics. Us: fair enough. Could you please share some scenarios you've invested in where there were parallel unit economics to us? We'd like to understand what you know about our space and where those economics make sense to investors such as yourselves. VC: certainly! We have an investment in <X> that's in your space, and their unit economics look great! The assumptions you have and the ones they have are about the same, but look at their margins! Us: ummm, so that's a function of revenue/price that we don't believe is even feasibly attainable. Our margins are smaller because we think the per-unit revenue is going to be challenged. It's why our numbers are fairly skeptical. VC: well, we believe they can reach that (unfounded) level of revenue. Within a year, the company this group funded was raising a Series A to stay alive because -- drum roll please -- the unit economics were not panning out. I say this is the best "no" because we had hard feedback on what worked for them. It also let us know they didn't really understand how price in our market space was going to have downward pressure. Our approach was to start very cheap, then improve over time. These investors weren't interested in that approach; rather, they went with the team who had "better margins". We learned a lot, and kept learning, from this investor's "no".