An Exciting Day At Flowbit

Startups are hard. Really, really hard. I thought they were joking when they said it was hard --I thought I'd be smarter than the average bear and avoid the hardships. Wrong. Things can get bloody demoralizing at times. It's a good thing I study Stoic philosophy. It helps me survive the tough stuff.

But there are also good days. Great days, actually. Today was one of them.

Woke up for a 9:30 AM pitch at Skydeck. Who did we pitch to? The founder of Splunk, Michael Baum. Michael Baum saw the company to a $50 million valuation pre-IPO, and now the company is one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley. It was an honor to pitch him, but I was also somewhat nervous. I figured he would tear us a new one in the Q&A.

Surprisingly, Baum wasn't too hard on us. Perhaps it was because our niche was so different from his area of expertise? Not sure. Anyway, he liked the idea and gave us some good advice on how to move forward. Or maybe he hated the idea? Not sure --Baum's not easy to read.

I could feel my phone vibrating during the pitch. I let it go to voicemail, but I called it back right after the pitch. It was Big Ideas at Berkeley.

"Hey Phillip," I said. "How are things on your end?"

"I'm about to make your day a bit better," said Phillip Denny on the other line. "Flowbit won First Place in Global Poverty Alleviation, with a grand prize of $X."

I literally jumped up and yelled, "YES!" Denny also invited two of us to a lunch tomorrow at Blum Hall, to meet some execs from USAID. Looking forward to it.

Later this afternoon, I had a conference call with Yasir (CFO) and an exec at a large water non-profit (identity kept anonymous until deal is finalized). The call lasted about an hour, and it got pretty technical. I was happy. I love talking technical to people who are serious about products.

We somehow closed a deal with them, and now we're doing a one-week trial of Flowbit with the potential to work together later. I remember that Yasir and I could barely hold in our excitement as I thanked the exec and quickly hung up the phone. We high-fived, smiling wide. "THAT'S HOW IT'S  DONE!" I exclaimed. "YUS!"

After that, we walked into a meeting with the entire team and Dr. Greg Hamm, a professor at Stanford University and co-founder of Agni Energy (a multi-million dollar renewable energies company in India). We talked to Dr. Hamm for a good hour about our company. We got a lot of good advice, and it turned out that Dr. Hamm was well connected to some angel groups in the area.

After the meeting, I headed home and drafted up the letter of intent for the water group. Shipped it off. And now I'm figuring out how we can solve their problem in our one-week trial period. It's exciting.

Today was definitely one of the good days. Days like these remind you why you're sleeping on the floor at a friend's apartment. They remind you why you've been full-time on no income for 5 months. They remind you that if you just keep pushing the ball forward inch by inch, you'll eventually get somewhere good.

We're not out of the woods yet. I'm sure some dark days lie ahead, but I'll enjoy this one for as long as it lasts.