you gotta pitch and pitch and pitch and pitch

Lots to talk about since the last post. I zipped down to NY city for a couple of days to meet with some potential technology partners. We met in the hotel lobby bar for a great chat which we capped off with a Tequila. I knew I would like these guys! We proceeded to munch down on some Cuban food and headed to Club Element http://www.elementny.com/ to check out partystrands, one of their products. This was the craziest place I've been to in a long time. First, there was a shoe and boot painter doing a demonstration which included paintings some woman's breasts (just what was poking out above her shirt which was lots). Then a dancer on spring stilts all dressed in white with neon lights going through her legs. This was followed by a singer and dancers and finally a couple of fire breathers. You don't exactly see this in Ottawa. You might be able to check some pictures at the following link show a more recent party http://www.mystrands.com/emt/venuephotos/all/p/4 . There are a couple of pics of me in the fourth row. Felt a little rough the next morning but survived the next meetings. To cap things off nicely, as I stepped out of the hotel to grab a yellow cab back to LaGuardia, the hotel doorman indicated that someone didn't show up for a limo and I could get it for the price of a cab to the airport. Bingo!

As a completely irrelevant tangent, I stayed at the W hotel .... a very nice 4 star hotel in Midtown east. I got it through Priceline.com by naming my price and got if for $180/night which is pretty darn good. I used Priceline.com in Toronto previously and got a great room right downtown for $90. Sounds like I'm doing an ad for these guys ... definitely not getting paid for it but thought you guys should know about this since it has paid off for me very nicely.

On to start-up stuff.

This last week was extremely intense. I had to prepare for my first pitch which I finally did today. In preparation for this, I pitched to as many trustworthy people as I could. I pitched to our advisors, I pitched to old colleagues and business partners, friends and on and on. I even invited about a dozen people to my place to sit through my pitch Saturday night. I got so much fantastic feedback and suggestions from everyone that the pitch got 100% better over 1 week. My kids even sat through it .... they said it felt like 3 hours! An exaggeration but it did take an hour and half which is way too long. I trimmed it down like crazy all of Sunday and managed to get it done in under an hour which is about right when you cover everything from A to Z plus questions and a demo. I got lots of emails this morning wishing me luck ... great to have a bunch of people rooting for you. I don't know if I hit it out of the park but I did feel pretty good about it. I guess we'll see. Stay tuned. The champagne is in the wine fridge just in case.

Allan "pretty exhausted but exhilarated" Isfan