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Rollercoaster ride to TechCrunch50, nearly
Categorised in:
Originally written 26 August 2009
Confessing your tale of TechCrunch50 last-minute-rejection is all the rage at the moment (see this and this) and I hate to turn down a good band-wagon, so here's our story.
Our tragic tale begins and ends with rejection. The first rejection comes in the form of "We regret that we are unable to pursue your application further" to which my reaction was "What? Not even an interview? Don't you know we're going to change the world?!" followed by silent disillusionment and despondency, followed by acceptance, followed by revival of optimism and moving on. Turns out this first rejection was all a twisted joke, because just as I had put TechCrunch50 completely out of my mind, we get another email: "We hope you're ready! We would like to invite you to select a time to demo..." followed by a demand that we make an appointment to talk to them in the next three days. Okay... does this mean the first email was a mistake? Or have they changed their minds? Is this second email a mistake? Should we ask them? Has too much work on yoomoot and not enough healthy exercise and sunlight caused us to collectively hallucinate?
We decide to indulge the potential hallucination and make an appointment. 24 hours after receiving the invitation email I'm on the phone to Mahalo-founder-come-internet-celebrity Jason Calacanis. This is decidedly surreal as I happen to be on a weekend break to see my parents in Nottingham. Sitting in front of mum's cranky computer in the family living room I don't feel like the genius co-founder of the next Google; I feel like an overgrown teenager who should get a proper job. Still, I've asked my mum not to start calling for the cats to come back inside and my stepfather has turned the volume down on his latest guns-and-explosions movie, so as far as Jason is concerned I'm in my state-of-the-art teleconferencing studio in Silicon Roundabout. Still, I've been cyber-stalking Jason ever since we heard of TechCrunch50, so having the voice of this distant glamourised figure of the technorati appear in my parents' living room still throws me.
I point Jason in the direction of our demo video (First mistake? Would he have preferred to see the live demo site? Does this look unprofessional?) and wait for him to call back. First question "So, this a site for discussing the news which is more organized than Yahoo! Answers?" Er.... no not really... (Oh crap, he completely hasn't got what we're about!). The rest of his questions are nearly all questions which were asked on the TechCrunch50 application form: "How would you describe Yoomoot in one sentence? Who are your competitors? Why would someone go to your site instead of using comments? How are you different from Yahoo! Answers [Yahoo! Answers again; does this mean he thinks we're competing with his own Mahalo Answers?]?" These are all great questions which we have great answers for, but I am completely thrown by them. We had considered all the questions that might be asked and the only ones we completely ruled out were the ones we had already answered in the application form since, well, why would they ask them again? As a result my answers are garbled and overly-long. By the end of the interview I know I've blown it. If only I'd had our TechCrunch50 application form in front of me I could have made nice, concise, enlightening answers just by reading aloud.
I don't tell my co-founder because I don't want to seem negative, but after the interview I feel it would be a miracle if we are selected to TechCrunch50. Sure enough, the deadline arrives and we are not amongst the chosen fifty:
"Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to place your company as a TechCrunch50 finalist."
Having gone through this once already it only takes me a few seconds to go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance and I feel kind of relieved not to have the tension hanging over me any more. My partner gets stuck on the denial stage for a bit and emails TechCrunch50 to ask if they've made a mistake again. They haven't and we move on. At least I no longer feel compelled to read Jason Calacanis blogging about his two pet dogs.
Confessing your tale of TechCrunch50 last-minute-rejection is all the rage at the moment (see this and this) and I hate to turn down a good band-wagon, so here's our story.
Our tragic tale begins and ends with rejection. The first rejection comes in the form of "We regret that we are unable to pursue your application further" to which my reaction was "What? Not even an interview? Don't you know we're going to change the world?!" followed by silent disillusionment and despondency, followed by acceptance, followed by revival of optimism and moving on. Turns out this first rejection was all a twisted joke, because just as I had put TechCrunch50 completely out of my mind, we get another email: "We hope you're ready! We would like to invite you to select a time to demo..." followed by a demand that we make an appointment to talk to them in the next three days. Okay... does this mean the first email was a mistake? Or have they changed their minds? Is this second email a mistake? Should we ask them? Has too much work on yoomoot and not enough healthy exercise and sunlight caused us to collectively hallucinate?
We decide to indulge the potential hallucination and make an appointment. 24 hours after receiving the invitation email I'm on the phone to Mahalo-founder-come-internet-celebrity Jason Calacanis. This is decidedly surreal as I happen to be on a weekend break to see my parents in Nottingham. Sitting in front of mum's cranky computer in the family living room I don't feel like the genius co-founder of the next Google; I feel like an overgrown teenager who should get a proper job. Still, I've asked my mum not to start calling for the cats to come back inside and my stepfather has turned the volume down on his latest guns-and-explosions movie, so as far as Jason is concerned I'm in my state-of-the-art teleconferencing studio in Silicon Roundabout. Still, I've been cyber-stalking Jason ever since we heard of TechCrunch50, so having the voice of this distant glamourised figure of the technorati appear in my parents' living room still throws me.
I point Jason in the direction of our demo video (First mistake? Would he have preferred to see the live demo site? Does this look unprofessional?) and wait for him to call back. First question "So, this a site for discussing the news which is more organized than Yahoo! Answers?" Er.... no not really... (Oh crap, he completely hasn't got what we're about!). The rest of his questions are nearly all questions which were asked on the TechCrunch50 application form: "How would you describe Yoomoot in one sentence? Who are your competitors? Why would someone go to your site instead of using comments? How are you different from Yahoo! Answers [Yahoo! Answers again; does this mean he thinks we're competing with his own Mahalo Answers?]?" These are all great questions which we have great answers for, but I am completely thrown by them. We had considered all the questions that might be asked and the only ones we completely ruled out were the ones we had already answered in the application form since, well, why would they ask them again? As a result my answers are garbled and overly-long. By the end of the interview I know I've blown it. If only I'd had our TechCrunch50 application form in front of me I could have made nice, concise, enlightening answers just by reading aloud.
I don't tell my co-founder because I don't want to seem negative, but after the interview I feel it would be a miracle if we are selected to TechCrunch50. Sure enough, the deadline arrives and we are not amongst the chosen fifty:
"Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to place your company as a TechCrunch50 finalist."
Having gone through this once already it only takes me a few seconds to go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance and I feel kind of relieved not to have the tension hanging over me any more. My partner gets stuck on the denial stage for a bit and emails TechCrunch50 to ask if they've made a mistake again. They haven't and we move on. At least I no longer feel compelled to read Jason Calacanis blogging about his two pet dogs.