A great YE story
A friend of mine from college had a great idea for an enterprise software application. He called me up and asked me if I wanted to help him make it happen. At the time, I was about 6 months into my engineering career, SportsLizard wasn't anything special, and I actually saw this as my best entrepreneurial chance.
I said yes, and the very next weekend I was in Boston pitching the idea to a potential investor. After a few weeks of working with him, I backed out because I didn't think I could give him the time commitment he needed, and he partnered with another one of our friends from college (who is, in fact, a waaaaay better programmer than me....he graduated with a comp-sci degree at age 19 and was making an ungodly amount of money by his 21st birthday).
Anyway, fast forward to a few weeks ago. The first person that my friend and I had met with way back in 2005 had referred him to a potential large buyer of his software in Denver. So he hopped on a plane and went out there to make a pitch. Well, the investor blew him off and sent his VP instead, who just ended up telling him that they were going with someone else. What a waste of a trip!
At the airport on the way back, delays getting through airport security made him miss his flight. Could the trip get any worse? Well, they put him on a direct flight back to Boston (instead of his flight which had a connecting flight) and bumped him to first class, where he struck up a conversation with a lady who just happened to be married to a huge real estate investor in Boston. My friend spoke to the investor (who is also partnered with a famous athlete which is really cool to me) and now they have a tentative deal to use their software to help manage their properties.
What an amazing story. Some would chalk it up to fate and luck, and those certainly played a part, but I give a lot of the credit to my friend. He is the type of person who knows EVERYONE because he talks to EVERYONE...he's the kind of guy who regularly strikes up conversations at a gas station with middle aged women just because he likes to meet and talk to new people. Every time I'm around him we end up meeting all sorts of new people, whether we're at a bar, a diner, a sporting event, or a gas station. He always greets them with a smile, and always ends up joking around with them - whether they're an 80 year old nun or a 30 year old construction worker.
Because of his innate social ability, he's able to meet far more people than the rest of us, and in turn get far more opportunities than the rest of us. Let's be honest - the majority of us wouldn't have stuck up a conversation on a plane with the person next to us (unless they were a hot member of the opposite sex), and most of us never would have had the opportunity my friend has.
I said yes, and the very next weekend I was in Boston pitching the idea to a potential investor. After a few weeks of working with him, I backed out because I didn't think I could give him the time commitment he needed, and he partnered with another one of our friends from college (who is, in fact, a waaaaay better programmer than me....he graduated with a comp-sci degree at age 19 and was making an ungodly amount of money by his 21st birthday).
Anyway, fast forward to a few weeks ago. The first person that my friend and I had met with way back in 2005 had referred him to a potential large buyer of his software in Denver. So he hopped on a plane and went out there to make a pitch. Well, the investor blew him off and sent his VP instead, who just ended up telling him that they were going with someone else. What a waste of a trip!
At the airport on the way back, delays getting through airport security made him miss his flight. Could the trip get any worse? Well, they put him on a direct flight back to Boston (instead of his flight which had a connecting flight) and bumped him to first class, where he struck up a conversation with a lady who just happened to be married to a huge real estate investor in Boston. My friend spoke to the investor (who is also partnered with a famous athlete which is really cool to me) and now they have a tentative deal to use their software to help manage their properties.
What an amazing story. Some would chalk it up to fate and luck, and those certainly played a part, but I give a lot of the credit to my friend. He is the type of person who knows EVERYONE because he talks to EVERYONE...he's the kind of guy who regularly strikes up conversations at a gas station with middle aged women just because he likes to meet and talk to new people. Every time I'm around him we end up meeting all sorts of new people, whether we're at a bar, a diner, a sporting event, or a gas station. He always greets them with a smile, and always ends up joking around with them - whether they're an 80 year old nun or a 30 year old construction worker.
Because of his innate social ability, he's able to meet far more people than the rest of us, and in turn get far more opportunities than the rest of us. Let's be honest - the majority of us wouldn't have stuck up a conversation on a plane with the person next to us (unless they were a hot member of the opposite sex), and most of us never would have had the opportunity my friend has.
posted by Adam McFarland at
4/03/2007 11:55:00 AM
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