In a world saturated with instant opinions, 24/7 information flows, and everyone telling everyone else what to do — the ability to receive accurate, outside feedback has become rare and valuable.
Venture Feedback is not cheerleading. It is not criticism. It is the kind of precise, experienced outside awareness that tells you what you cannot see from inside your own project or venture — what’s working, what’s vulnerable, and what could bring everything down if left unaddressed.
The Leaders and Executives who need Venture Feedback the most are often the least receptive to it.
Visionaries operate in such a rare paradigm as well as identity invested in their own venture and often get dug in. Pioneers face danger, interference and societal resistance and opposition. Entrepreneurs mistake early momentum for ironclad security and sustainability. And this is the window of timing when the most important feedback is needed — and most often ignored.
Kim Greenhouse has worked with some of the most remarkable inventors, pioneers, and entrepreneurs of her lifetime — people doing genuinely important work that the world needed. In this short video she shares stories from those experiences that are surprising, funny, and deeply instructive. Including one involving a poof gun.
Find out what Venture Feedback is — and why the ventures that survive and scale are the ones that remained open to hearing what they didn’t want to hear.
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Read the Full Verbatim Transcript: “Venture Feedback” with Kim Greenhouse
Venture Feedback
Venture feedback — in a world where everybody’s online and leaving texts and direct messages, and everything is instant, and everybody’s telling everybody what they think and what they should do — there’s a lot of interference in the ability to receive. And that happens through and from all the technology that’s at play that we know of and that we don’t know of — all the WiFi, all the cell stations, all the low-frequency energy that’s going on, changes in weather, the food supply, the water we drink. And then the constant barrage of information.
It’s very easy to become narcissistic and think you know — and think you know everything there is to know — because you’re running with your project, or you’re running with your venture. So Venture Feedback is very important. And I have to tell you that I’ve had a very, very substantial track record giving feedback to people that are doing the most remarkable work. Some are still alive — several handfuls are not still alive anymore — but they were remarkable people doing very important things.
So there was — I’ll just tell you this, this may sound like a comedy, but it’s true — I was representing an inventor who spent years on a solution to take patients off of kidney dialysis and put them on these mobile plasma packs. His name was Dr. Alex Belz, and I represented him for a couple of years. He was a very cantankerous, but very funny guy. And one of the things was that he was so emphatic about this solution that he was, you know, ready to accept money from just about anybody.
And one of the things I told him very early was — there were some comments that he would make. He said to me, “You’re gonna think this is a joke, but it’s a true story. I have the ability to invent a poof gun.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “To disappear people. I can do it.” I said, “Do me a favor, do me a favor — if I’m representing you, stop talking about this, and promise me that you will not do this. You will not do this.” He goes, “There are some people that need to be poofed.” I said, “We all feel that, but you can’t do it. And you’ve got to focus only on your plasma technology to take patients off of kidney dialysis.”
So I got him to give it up for the time I knew him, and then he passed away. But these are things along the way, and nothing is gonna be as extreme as inventing a poof gun and actually having it, because you know how to build it. But I have integrity, and I made it my business to tell him: I’m not representing you, I’m not assisting you, if you’re working on that — you’re gonna do that, or you’re gonna give the plans to somebody else to set it up, that’s just kind of some lighthearted feedback.
But then there was another wonderful person. He didn’t become a client — I did interview him, and I don’t want to say his name, because I don’t want to impugn — all the years he worked on this incredible solution to get rid of smog, to help bring in the rain. This particular person had funders that were so controlling — so much in the way of his work really being known — but he didn’t care, because that was his only funder, you see?
And so giving feedback on disruptive ventures and solutions requires a person to be able to put aside some things that they strongly, you know, are for — they’re staunch, they’re dug in about something, that they don’t know they’re dug in about it.
And it turns out, I ended up meeting the funder. And it was very clear to me that while this person may have funded this man and this inventor, this incredible pioneer, he was also totally in the way of it happening. And it never happened. And how you know is — I offered to bring in money to do it, and the dealings with the funder was horrendous.
Now, that’s when I was doing all the Rainmaking — I was involved in bringing things all the way through. Now I advise. The whole talk could be given about that.
There is another venture I talked about in a commercial that I did for a recent show, and there was an older man who had a medical solution that had a trade secret, and he was very secretive, but he couldn’t bring it in himself. He needed somebody who could set up everything. Anyway, I did. And when it came to giving him feedback at a certain point in time — once the thing got built up and started to have momentum and started to roll — he started to wind it down. He didn’t want feedback.
He was less receptive to listening. And the fact is that the venture wasn’t ironclad. There were still a lot of vulnerabilities in it. But he didn’t care. At that point, once there was momentum, and once there were sales, and once there was a little bit of traction, and everything was set up, he thought it was a done deal. Even a business plan — what a scenario we set up for him. I hired a subcontracting team to help me with this. He could not look at the numbers. He could not face the numbers.
So there’s a lot of you out there that are innovative, you’re pioneers, you’re entrepreneurs, you’re visionary, or you’re just a very good business person. You know what you want, you’re passionate about it. But I’d like to offer you one of the things that I’ve shared with many incredible people during my lifetime. And usually when I make a call — once I see something, sense something — I’m usually accurate.
So call for Venture Feedback, and call The Rainmaking Company at rainmaking.ch. I’d like to help you. And I not only have helped other people during my life, but I’ve been involved from beginning to end on several projects. I understand the cycles, how things work, and how entrepreneurs and visionaries and pioneers get into trouble. And I’d like to help you with whatever I can that you’re receptive to. Thank you very much. And don’t invent a poof gun.