First Dandelife Pitch  − 1 January, 2006

I could be wrong about the date. But it seemed awfully close to the first trip to San Francisco I took to see Edward and start working on the development plan. Maybe a couple of weeks before that, I had a bunch of designs that Edward had Pavel put together for me based on wireframes that I put together over Thanksgiving weekend at the Cunningham's in Yucaipa. Anyway, the pitch had been the result of a lot of work that I had already been doing to put together the designs. I'd already spent the year before that putting together a business plan along with an executive summary, a 20-slide deck, and had a fair amount of coaching from Franz before I even began to put together ideas for funding. I'd built a prototype. Played with it. Now I had an actual revenue model. I had actual designs. I had a vision that was starting to take shape quite nicely thanks to Edward's help.

I sent the business plan, exec sum and designs to Franz. Franz was/is a personal friend and though not technically a mentor, I consider him to be a trustworthy advisor. He is also a venture capitalist who has an angel fund for early stage start-ups like Dandelife called Express Ventures. So when it came time to make an ask, he was the first person I turned to.

I'm still not sure if he was just being gracious or if he really thought the deck, executive summary and designs were good, but he said they were. The only thing in his mind that hadn't been made a case for in the pitch was an actual need. He said I hadn't in his opinion clearly articulated a need for people to put their personal biographies online.

Fair enough.

I'm not so sure he feels the same way any more. I haven't shown him the progress I've made and damn if investing in Internet ventures hasn't changed considerable since we last spoke.

In any case, Franz hooked me up with UCSD Connect - an early-stage venture coaching service that USCD puts on. I'll write about that next.

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