Lessons from Business Development

After interning in business development at two very different companies — a SaaS healthcare platform and a consumer travel tech startup — I came away with three hard lessons.

1. Relationships are infrastructure. Every deal, every partnership, every opportunity starts with a relationship. The pipeline matters, but the people matter more.

2. Rejection is data. Every "no" tells you something — about your pitch, your product, your timing, or your fit. Most people treat rejection as a wall. The best BD people treat it as a map.

3. Proposals are promises. When you write a business proposal, you're making a series of commitments. Be careful what you commit to. Be more careful about what you can actually deliver.

These aren't revolutionary insights. But experiencing them firsthand is very different from reading about them.