Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Advisers and Angels

As we all know, long meetings are frequently less effective than short ones. So, I'm pleased to say that in the last few days, I've had not one, but two, effective meetings that ran three hours.

The first was on Friday, with one of my advisers. We talked mostly about business and how to build the business, not the product, though we spent some time on that too. I learned a lot, but, not surprisingly, was reminded of how much I still have to learn about business.

Today, I went to the Alliance of Angels pitch clinic, a once-a-month seminar that covers what the "10-minute pitch" and the corresponding pitch deck should look like. It's somewhat ironic that it takes three hours to cover a 10-minute talk. But, it wasn't three wasted hours. Like the 10-minute pitch itself, it was all content. Sure, there were sample slides and even some silly bad example slides at the end, but there wasn't the fluff you so frequently get in presentations. The information was clear, useful, and on target, and it was obvious that the presentation had been well honed over many, many presentations. Net: if you're thinking of looking for funding, even if it's not from angels, I highly recommend AoA's pitch clinic.

The meeting and the seminar were different in a number of ways. One was a discussion while the other was a presentation. One had a very simple agenda while the other had a big long agenda and a slide deck. But, they were both successful, despite their length, for the same reason -- clear focus, with everything discussed revolving around that focus. And that's something useful even when you're not in a meeting.

In product news, I'm in the midst of rewriting the authentication system again. Almost done. I'll blog why and what tomorrow.

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