It’s easier to say no when you have concerns about the market, the business model or the price. The entrepreneurial team is great, you would enjoy working with them, you think they are money-makers, but there’s something in the general model that prevents you from pulling the trigger. Those are the easy ones. The hard ones are when you are saying no because of the team. Successful start-ups typically follow Thomas Edison’s genius formula: 10 percent inspiration (the vision or idea), 90 percent perspiration (the execution). Whether you like the idea or not is irrelevant if you don’t believe the team has the wherewithal to execute it successfully.