Yabba-Dabba-Doo
The Lighter Side of Raising Money in Silicon Valley (Part #2)
My close friend and cofounder, Scott Belser, and I met with a potential angel investor on the 3rd floor of a hotel near SFO (San Francisco International Airport). The meeting couldn’t have gone better.
The problem emerged right after the meeting when we climbed back into Scott’s car, and it refused to start.
This wasn’t a complete surprise. The car, a 12-year-old white hatchback, had struggled to start earlier in the day, and (to say the least) wasn’t in great condition. Not only had the car surpassed the 250,000-mile mark, but it was also falling apart. The floorboards had holes in them, and so you could literally see the road through the floor while driving. It had a Flintstones-like quality that was amusing (and slightly terrifying).
Fortunately, Scott knew precisely what to do when the ignition was acting up. The solution, as he explained, was to put the car in neutral, push the car until it was moving around five mph, then Scott would jump into the driver’s seat and frantically turn the key — and that would (typically) do the trick.
So we started pushing. And then it occurred to us. The window of the hotel room where we had just pitched the investor offered a clear, unobstructed view of what we were doing, and how utterly pathetic we appeared.
Once we started laughing, it became impossible to stop, and that made pushing the car more difficult. Neither of us had the courage to look up to see if the investor was watching us. Our only consolation, which I observed while gasping for breath, was that we were validating our status as hungry entrepreneurs.
On the third attempt, the car finally started and we drove away. To this day, I have no idea if the investor witnessed our show.
I’ll share anecdote #3 shortly.
