Inflexibility can absolutely kill an opportunity, and it can certainly kill a deal.
Maybe it is because we're used to just dealing with banks, where a fairly stable or constant product, like a house or car is easily measured and connected with your credit score, and a decision is made in short time within fairly limited range of expectations.
That's not the way it works in private equity. I'm not doing deals at the top of the food chain, and I don't present myself that way. The deals I look at might have real potential, but they are most of the time limited by the owner's or the entrepreneur's limited vision, limited capital, limited expertise. Each of these deals are "one-off" deals. Each of them is going to take a unique connection of multiple moving parts to get them off the ground, and to keep them off the ground until they can be successful. It's a combination of building and surviving until you can get enough "traction" that you break free of that initial inertia of being unknown, undercapitalized, inadequately staffed, and too tired to do it all your self.
Maybe you're one of the lucky few who will have an idea, have a rich uncle, and have an immediate raging success with little effort, but most of the small and lower middle market entrepreneurs I know are visionary people, with a ton of perseverance, who believe so strongly in what they are doing, that they are willing to scratch and claw for as long as it takes to be successful.
Scratching and clawing means giving up equity, doing without certain things, compromising with strategic partners, financial partners, and looking for creative ways to get things done and survive.
Sometimes, when I meet people who haven't come to terms with reality in this respect, I wonder how many deals with real potential are going to die on the vine, or languish because of inflexibility or a lack of scrappy perseverance and the willingness to see things another way.
