Great advice from Roger aka informationarbitrage:

• Be confident. You rock; you really do. The fact that you are starting something and devoting your life to it is freaking awesome. This alone should give you the confidence and esteem to ask for help with head held high. The worst thing that someone can say is no. And if they do? Screw them - and move on to the next one.

• Be focused. You have to know what you are asking for. Being confident while being unfocused in your ask is really annoying and will ultimately lead to failure. If you’ve gone through the trouble to set up an ask, make it time well-spent for all parties. Do you homework and know what you want. Confidence + focus is a recipe for success.

• Be tough. Getting kicked around and rejected is part of any great mission. It means what you’re doing is either really stupid or orthogonal to conventional thought (read: a potential home run). Given that you rock, I’m going to assume it is a differentiated but dissonant idea which will require a very refined pitch to communicate and convince smart, cynical people (be they potential employees, investors or customers). No is a perfectly reasonable answer: just make sure that you are getting textured rejections in order that you can learn and use that information for subsequent meetings.

• Be persistent. Staying in touch with those to whom you’ve pitched, where they are potential “yesses” in the future but need to see more and better thinking/product/proof, often yields tremendous results. Saying what you’re going to do and then doing it is a boon for fund-raising at every stage. Use that confidence, clarity and toughness to fuel the persistence necessary to win over high-value people as your company evolves.