Techcrunch Pitch(es)

Ah Techcrunch, purveyor of the worlds dwindling venture capital money as it slowly get’s crunched like a man with a peanut allergy eating a brazil nut.

Last week, saw me have a phone interview with the delightful (sounding) Heather from Techcrunch HQ in the US, to see whether my witty submission for Qajack to feature at TC 50 in September was enough to enable David and I to dress us as grey clad web revolutionaries in matching dark grey berets and walk onto that hallowed stage and pitch our ‘thang’ to Silicon Valley.

It didn’t go so well. ‘Don’t worry’ soothed the wife, ‘When you think it’s gone badly it sometimes goes well.’

She used to be an Actor’s Agent, enough said.

Heather was expecting an all singing, all dancing presentation, I’d mis-interpreted the brief and winged her a few measly screenshots, mostly showing Dave getting angry and asking questions about the end of the world.

Having prepared a script with phrases like:

‘Qajack marries compulsion and gaming addicition with information exchange and reputation building’

‘Online reputation index’

I answered the call, said ‘Hi Heather, have you had your coffee this morning?’ and made the decision to adlib, prove to myself that I knew Qajack and could sell Qajack.

Qajacking Hell, 15 minutes later, having rambled on about a really useful ‘video’ game and such like I felt like a guy waking up with a girl in an unfamiliar bed with no clothes on and Michael Bay’s meteor classic Armageddon paused on the TV. Weird and unsettling and we hadn’t even got to the Aerosmith song yet.

Thursday evening, 24 numb hours later and after a mornings reality check with a VC about writing a business plan, I walked into a sauna of a Church in Soho for the inaugural Techcrunch UK demo pitch.

Mike Butcher, looked flustered and buzzed, Doug Richards was introduced as ‘the Simon Cowell’ figure, which must have made Mike ‘Danni Minogue’.

Beers flowed, Mike called Qajack onto stage, I had 30 seconds, I dropped my planned Cowell/Minogue joke and went straight for the jugular. It was all a blur. I North Eastern Debating Champion 1988-9, the one Viking chosen to talk about the other Vikings on Blue Peter in 1984, the guy who’se impressions of trans gender Big Brother winner Nadia (I forget which series) had the whole of Battersea laughing into their wheat ales, I was nervous as hell in a room full of geeks and financiers wondering why even though I didn’t, I should be outside with the smokers.

Wat Zat Song, a site that enables you to hum a tune into your computer mike and hope you’re singing is good enough to tell you what the song is, was voted demo of the evening. Like the episode of Alan Partridge where Alan is having lunch with the BBC’s commissioning editor, having been told his show has been axed, he waves a cheese about and pitches a show called ‘Monkey Tennis’? It felt a bit like that.

I talked, I exchanged business cards and scuttled off to another meeting in another hall to talk about the Street Art Exhibition at the Tate Modern.

I woke up Friday morning and resolved to play with Qajack when it launches in beta and then and only then pitch it to potential financiers. At the moment, it’s like me telling everyone the baby my wife is about to give birth to, is a ginger haired boy who loves eating beetroot. I just don’t know yet, I’ve got to wait until it pops out after a lot of gas and air has been applied.

I’m learning, we’re learning, it’s exciting but sometimes pure zeal clouds rational thought and I’m not sure I really know what Qajack is yet, I know what it is supposed to do, now all I need is for it to puke breast milk on me and smile, then I’ll know.

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