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07/11/07 When People Scale
LONDON, UK - 6 months ago I started specifying a feature-set of a bespoke web-app in work when I had any down-time to fill. A friend got involved and development under his coding genius started to roll late into the evenings after work. We launched the pilot 1 month ago and last week I got to demo it to a group of 30 pilot users in our Bangkok office, a real personal win.
Today the opportunity came to present the pilot data to a senior technology management team. The title of this post reflects the fact that I only remembered the ‘reason’ I started all this as I left the room afterwards. Part of me started this project as a ‘profile builder’, a way to be purple, and *just maybe* to stand up in front of senior technology management before ‘my time’ and present our work as ‘tech grads’. A smile hit my face on the way out as I met an old friend in the corridor that reminded me of when I started out on day one. It hit me how ‘People Scale’, back then this senior team were so far from my reach and today it felt comfortable to have them within my operating circumference. I’m sure the networking advantage of being on the technical graduate programme is a large part of this - but its an interesting thought of how in 9 months my perception of myself has changed.
I understood our presentation was received very well. The feedback was I should have focussed on the ’story’ of a usecase rather than the feature set itself. I’m kicking myself for that - as I got in the lift to the meeting I said to myself in my head again & again “just tell the story“. I’ll put that down to a learning experience.
Today we were pitching for business sponsorship and commitment to the future of the codebase - that’s just about as close to an internal VC pitch as I’ve come. Looking back - I really enjoyed it. Hey, it’s easy when you’ve a great product!
-Robin
Tags: pitch, presentation, vc
3 Comments
Well done on all your hard work man!
Great post Robin. I was hoping to blog my reaction instead of just commenting but I’m snowed under with paperwork. I’ll come back to this later.
Congrats, it’s great to see you are learning, working and enjoying yourself! The perfect balance I think. Sounds like a great app.
