I showed my plan to 1200 people 900 said no, 300 showed interest, 85 did anything, 35 were serious and 11 made me a billionaire – attributed to Bill Gates

There is a quote circulating the web, attributed to Bill Gates, it goes like this:

I just showed my plan to 1200 people. 900 said no, 300 showed some interest. Only 85 actually did anything, 35 of those were serious and 11 made me a billionaire.

Falsely attributed to Bill Gates

The issue is that the quote is also attributed to another person, Bill Britt an Amway multi-level marketing (MLM) marketer, who died on January 23, 2013, at 81 years old. Thus it seams to me, someone recycled the quote, and attributed it to another Bill.

Not everyone took Bill Gates seriously, but that does not mean he had to pitch this much. Especially given that his mom was a prominent business woman, and sat on the same board of IBM CEO.

Mary Gates, a prominent Seattle businesswoman who helped her son, William H. Gates 3d, get the contract that led to a lucrative relationship with I.B.M. for his fledgling Microsoft Corporation, died at her home early today. She was 64.

On the other hand when we are talking about MLM, people are usually skeptic, and it would make perfect sense to have these numbers of rejections, no interest or loss of interest.

Concerning pitching, the average amount of pitch before reaching investors can vary, and depends on the stage of the startup or project, but also on the reach and the network, the majority of founders can’t even reach 1/10th of 1200 investor.