Hi,
I asked 100 CEOs this question, and here are the top 5 answers:
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Sharmadean Reid MBE, Founder of WAH Nails, Beautystack and The Stack World, author of New Methods For Women. |
“Out of all the times I’ve had to say 'no', by far the hardest was turning down funding from people who didn’t align with our values.
As a woman, saying 'no' can sometimes feel impossible. We’re expected to be pleasant and amenable to everybody.
I've turned down a six figure investment from a fund who had zero female partners. All the women who worked at the fund were either executive assistants or in marketing. I asked myself: ‘How can they help build a business around women if there are no female equity holders at the table?’ It just didn’t make sense to me.
My advice? Make your list of needs before you start looking for funding. Set your own strategy, and don't let investors dictate your strategy to you.
It’s never easy to walk away from money, especially when your business needs it. But choosing the right partners to align yourself with is one of the most important choices you'll ever make.”
“A global brand asked us to open and run a Hip Pop café in one of their flagship stores.
A fully funded build with massive PR potential. A dream partnership with a team we genuinely liked and admired. Saying 'no' felt really hard but deep down, we knew it was the right decision.
Our job is to focus on the company, making and creating brilliant drinks that people love. A café would’ve been exciting, but it would have pulled us into a completely different business model. We aren’t hospitality experts, and hospitality is a whole other world: staffing, logistics, food safety, daily operations. It’s an entirely new focus that would have stretched our team thin and distracted us from what we do best.
We also realised that our brand, while growing fast, risked being dwarfed next to a global powerhouse. We didn’t want to become a side act in someone else’s story. So, we turned it down.
They were incredibly understanding, and the project has since thrived with a team far better suited to hospitality. That made it easier to see it was the right call.
Walking away from a shiny opportunity is brutal, but it’s how you protect the thing that matters most - your focus, your purpose, and the brand you’ve worked so hard to build.”
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Varun Bhanot, Cofounder & CEO of MAGIC AI, an AI-powered fitness company named one of Time Magazine’s ‘Best New Inventions’ in 2024. |
“The hardest 'no' was turning down funding to protect our business model.
Mid-raise, a later-stage fund loved our growth but didn’t love our model. Their money was real and their conditions were, too: scale back the hardware, go lighter on manufacturing, and focus instead on software and content.
On paper, it sounded efficient with faster margins and simpler operations, but in my gut it felt like stripping away the very thing that made us unique.
Building both hardware and software is complex, but it’s also what makes the product stand out. It means navigating R&D, supply chains and manufacturing, at the same time as training AI models, which is challenging, but it means we have real intellectual property. That complexity creates a moat no pure software company can replicate.
Saying 'no' risked runway and reputation. We passed anyway. We tightened our narrative to investors and customers, and kept moving forward with improving the product instead of getting distracted.
Shortly after, we found the right partners who are now our current investors, who valued our product, and leaned in on execution rather than trying to rewrite our vision.
The hardest ‘no’ preserved the thing we actually set out to build. Money solves time; alignment solves everything. If a term sheet asks you to reshape your vision, remember that you’re building for years ahead, not for tomorrow’s headlines.”
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Rachel Murphy, Founder of The Grafter, a consultancy that partners with businesses generating over £1 million in revenue. She previously founded and exited Difrent in 2020 for £13.3 million. |
“I turned down a £1 million contract that could have been a game-changer for my company. My reason? The culture was so f*****g toxic.
Two months into building my consultancy, we were parachuted into a large London business to assess why a major programme was failing. There were 40+ consultants, millions being burned, and nothing to show for it.
Midway through a meeting, I asked one of the client’s consultants what he’d delivered. He looked me dead in the eye and sneered, “I don’t answer questions from your lot.”
A homophobic dig - in front of twenty people! The most senior person in the room, a woman, said nothing. That summed up the culture: archaic, fearful, inert.
Later that day, a senior leader made me an offer: “I want you to streamline this sh*t show. It’s about a million pounds over the next 12 months. Are you in?”
On paper: life-changing revenue. But could I, in good conscience, put a junior into a room where bigotry got a free pass? I said 'no'.
Was it tempting? Of course. I’m commercial to my bones, but I won’t tolerate environments where people feel unsafe or small. My team saw I had their back and they stayed.
Two and a half years later, we sold that same company for £13.3 million.
Turning down that £1 million didn’t cost me. It bought me everything that actually matters.”
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Bejay Mulenga MBE, Founder of Supa Network, a platform teaching young people enterprise skills, and Seeds Of The Wild, a creative food service company. Youngest ever recipient of HM The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion. |
“I said 'no' to collaborating with Selfridges and it was the best decision I ever made.
During the pandemic, I fed 35,000 people through my food bank initiative, funded by a food festival. It popped off. The festival was listed on Sky News, The Times, Time Out. It’s part of the reason why I was awarded an MBE.
During the height of that event, we were offered a residency in Selfridges, and our own permanent restaurant space. We had to move fast if we wanted to make a bid.
At the time, I was working with a coach. That work forced me to write down what I stood for, what my non-negotiables were.
When the Selfridges offer came through, I realised immediately that it didn’t align with my values. A year before, I’d never said I wanted to open a restaurant. And when I looked ahead three years, I couldn’t see myself running one.
I said 'no'. I realised that the vision wasn’t fully mine.
Saying 'no' in that moment was hard: it was exciting, financially rewarding, and high-profile.
But five years later, I’m pursuing work that feels right for me: media, podcasting, angel investing. I’ve even come full circle back to the food world, founding a food studio that caters and curates experiences for brands like Chanel and Dr. Martens.
Sometimes your hardest 'no' can give space for the biggest yes. That 'no' gave me the room to build something that really aligns with who I am now.”
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Talk soon,
Steven