"You're telling me you benched 360 pounds? Wow." You could see the look of disbelief in their eyes as the conference room went silent. "Yes," I responded hesitantly, despite the statement's truth. "But not recently. I haven't been to the gym in a couple of months."
"Well … as venture capitalists, it's our job to take what you guys say and validate it, right? Did you know we actually have a workout room downstairs?" My eyes widened and stomach sank as attention was immediately drawn away from Textworks and focused directly on whether or not I could put my strength where my mouth was.
Terrified at first, I recollected and assured myself that there is no way that I would actually have to go downstairs and prove my statement. Still uncertain, Miles, my business partner, grinned at me from across the room. He had faith in my abilities to put up a respectful weight right there - we've known each other for a long time and he has seen me in this very situation before. He still, however, gave me that "you better be able to do this or I'm going to kill you, Alex" look.
The meeting continued, and I was fairly convinced I wouldn't actually have to bench press. Everything was going perfectly - the extensive and draining pre-meeting preparation (seven hours that night, up until 3 a.m., and three hours during the day of) definitely paid off. We were at our first follow-up presentation at one of the most prestigious venture capital firms in the country and couldn't be more thrilled.
In the meeting prior, the venture capitalists left us with a couple major questions that we had to answer: How can you prove that there is a market for your services? How does Textworks fit into the "ecosystem" of its competitors as well as potential synergistic partners? This follow up served to answer those questions before continuing to present to other partners within the firm.
What does our ecosystem look like? Not completely certain, we brought on a friend in the accelerated Information Systems Management masters program at Carnegie Mellon to be our chief technical officer.
2008 Woodie Awards
