Yesterday I made my first funding pitch for my startup. I feel good about the parts that I had control over, namely the presentation and the little speech I gave about our company and product... but the Q&A session has me all worked up. I am worried that we flubbed the questions in the eyes of the judging panel, and that people weren't listening. I commented to my partner afterwards that some of the questions we got were so basic, they were like softball questions, that were already answered during my presentation, and he said "well you probably didn't notice because you were so in the moment, but a lot of people were texting on their phones." One panelist even made a LinkedIn friend request DURING my pitch! In a way, that's flattering I suppose, but what better way to let me know you're not paying attention to anything I'm saying?!
Vent over.
This waiting part is hard. I feel the urge to call a psychic to find out whether we'll get this seed funding for the company, but I know in my heart of hearts that it'll just add to my anxiety and possibly get my hopes up. There's just a few weeks I need to wait to find out whether they've made a decision. I've been able to let go and move on with other things, e.g., big customer proposals, getting contract terms & conditions in place, etc. but this is funding opportunity getting me really worked up. I'm trying to think about what I did in the past when there was this kind of uncertainty around something, like waiting to hear whether I got into college and which one (honestly, that was in the last millennia so maybe I should cut myself some slack in trying to remember!) but tripping in trying to find a way to chill the F out and try to move forward rather than dwell on "did we get it? did we get it? did we get it?" UGH.
