His response was personal and compassionate. It stung at the time, but long term I've got a lot more respect for the man for it.
Two quick stories:
1. Once emailed a prominent venture capitalist/technologist a question. It was maybe 15 words long. He responded in 5 minutes with a one word answer that truly answered my question and helped tremendously.
2. Another time I was taking a data mining class while working and I asked my professor a question. It was regarding a situation at work and a solution that I proposed. After not hearing back from my first email, I sent him a follow up email asking if he had received it. He finally replied and said that if I wanted the answer, I would have to hire him at $250/hr, his going rate. Sure, I can understand his stance in that just b/c I paying for his class and instruction does not mean that I can get free consulting. But, why couldn’t he tell me that with a reply to the first email? Why couldn’t he just tell me if my proposed solution was in the ball park or not? Here’s the zinger, I wrote the same email to the author of the book we were using in this class. He responds in 24 hours with sincere and honest feedback regarding my proposal as well as a PDF of 4 pages of the upcoming edition that covered this topic. My respect for the author sky rocketed (and now I cannot recommend his services and books fast enough). Not so much for the professor.
Naturally, I'm sending this from a blackberry...
I've always either gotten either "We are pleased you interviewed but we are continuing the search" or no response at all.
Was I terrible? Was I awesome, but you cut me out for unfair and irrational reasons? I'll never know, and never know how I can improve. Does a great job of wrecking your psyche when you've been doing it for months straight.
The no response at all shit is lame. I've had that happen to me twice, and it's just rude. Even a curt form letter is better than simply discarding a person once a company decides they have no use for someone.
I was at the point where it took me awhile (3 weeks?) to get the hint, desperately clutching to any sort of lead.
But the day-to-day people I worked for/with were trustworthy.
But, I suspect he has the same problem PG has. Rejection doesn't mean that something went wrong. And, in a high-volume scenario like this, he sure as hell doesn't have time to give people thorough responses.
I think Godin could learn a bit from the devotion Gary Vaynerchuk shows to his audience.
When I was applying for jobs I used to get back all sorts of crap like this.. it's silly. One company got back to me within 24 hrs with a simple: "sorry your not for us because xyz"
I reapplied instantly and in the "why are you applying" space put "because your the first company not to reject me with complete bull and just gave me a straight honest answer. I trust you."
I got the job too :)
Rule 101 of rejections: don't be nice. Be kind certainly but tell them where they went wrong. They've already been rejected - sucking up helps neither party....