Meeting with Investor Part 1

What a day today. At 10:30 I met with an angel investor. I’ll call him BTLE for Bigger Than Life Enthusiast. How that meeting came about is interesting, at least I think it is, but it takes several paragraphs to create the picture.

Three weeks ago a recruiter contacted me via email about a position he was trying to fill. I’ll call him R. When R and I connected over the phone, he mentioned that he was recruiting for someone who was hiring people skilled in the e-learning field for a start-up.

Obviously I asked questions one of which was how he got my email? It was through my Beyond Linear’s website, which he got from Linked-In. While R and I talked, I searched for him in Linked-In and found him. R does have a history of recruiting, but his current employer doesn’t have a website. I thought that to be a bit odd. Even I, with my peanut-of-a-company, have a website. I asked more in-depth questions about the job, like who the SMEs would be, but got vague answers.

I figured someone was playing a prank and I decided to go along with R. But when R explained to me that the focus of this start-up was to develop a product that would be a new way to look at development, that it would use a lot of videos, and that its purpose was about the whole being. OK. I did stop breathing.

For those of you who know about my idea, you can well imagine how I felt. His description hit too close to home. I instantly wondered if any of the people whom I had disclosed my idea to had disclosed it to other people. I then thought about what a pain in the ass it would be to enforce the NDA that friends, family, employees, and/or consultants had signed.

Then, I thought about the meeting I had just had, that very morning, with my IP attorney. The patent application was on its way to being filed. Sigh of relief! No, I am not making any of this up. I swear. All of this in one day. So I resumed my breathing and my heart resumed its regular palpitation.

I ask R more questions on this someone who is looking to hire people and the answers that I got were that he is a man of independent wealth, who owns several businesses, and who also happens to be an angel investor. I swallowed and said nothing just yet.

R then tells me that he believes that I’d be a great candidate for the position he is trying to fill and that he was meeting with this man, BTLE, that afternoon to discuss all of the candidates. I tell R about my idea (no disclosure just overall kind of thing), that the a patent application for the idea was soon to be filed, and that I am looking for an investor. R was very willing to mention it to BTLE and we ended the conversation with the agreement that if BTLE wanted to meet me, he’d call me.

And three days later, as I was on my way to pick up Tomás from school, BTLE called me.