How time flies…only 20 days to the big show! Invites are out (via us…Shortlist!), and we are working furiously on our pitches.  Did a practice pitch for Troy Henikoff, Sam Yagan and Steve Farsht.  They did not rip it completely to shreds this time, so I think we are making progress!

The dev/design team is pushing out the updates, and we’re almost ready to show off the demo site.  It has been a long time coming, but I think the wait will be worth it!  We have integrated Klout, LinkedIn and Twitter APIs, and Brantley is work out the algorithms for the “Popular” and “Recommended” attendee sorts. According to Chris Courtney, our designer, we’re really pushing the envelope on responsive HTML5/CSS.  Which means our site should look awesome from space, I think.

We’re also getting geared up for the post-Demo Day fundraising round.  Term Sheets and Preferred Stock and Drag Alongs, holy crap!  It’s like a different language - one that is crucial to our survival.  Luckily we have some great teachers here. 

Meanwhile, I’ll be taking our son, Collin, to Gran’s in Houston next week so that Mom and Dad can stress out in private.  And we’ll be meeting with the good folks at DFJ Mercury on the same trip. 

Off to read Brad Feld’s Term Sheets blog…

This past Friday we marked 45 days in the 90-day Excelerate program. And to celebrate, we got to pitch Ron Conway, THE super-angel of Silicon Valley, who actually CAME TO CHICAGO! We were understandably amped, and we felt like we did a good job. We did get feedback that we came off a bit too presentational (we were too excited to sit down), so a note to future teams is that Ron prefers a conversation over a “pitch.” He was a very receptive and had a very kind energy about him…you can tell he really does enjoy helping startup entrepreneurs.

In other news, Troy confirmed that we will be the event platform for Demo Day after seeing Chris’s new designs. He also helped us narrow our scope so that we do a few things really well. And Sam Yagan has agreed to be our super-mentor…yay!

Next week is Tech Week. And we are determined to have a new name by then, so look out for our big reveal early next week.

OK, they also call it “Mini MBA Month,” but this is REALLY the month where we are working hard to create what we want to show on Demo Day.  And the pressure is on.

We have given ourselves some very simple goals for Demo Day.  1) Build V2 of the app, 2) Get 5 more conferences as customers, 3) Re-brand and re-name.  We’re on our second “Sprint” with pivotal tracker.  The first sprint was not as productive as we’d hoped, because there was a lot of housecleaning yet to do.  But we did get the login pages, account and profile creation pages built!  And Brantley’s confident that he’ll be able to bust stuff out very quickly now that’s he’s made himself at home in the code base. 

We’ve had some fantastic meetings this week as well.  We’re making connections over at Association Forum, and being mentored by Dollard Carey (formerly of SmithBucklin).  And we’re considering narrowing our focus even further to a specific type of event (more details revealed as decisions are made). 

We’re also getting to know the other team member a little better (finally!).  The pressure is on for everyone, but when you’re here at 10:00 at night, things start to loosen up. 

Back to executing!

As you can tell from the last few posts, we were innundated with mentors for the last two weeks of June. It was both overwhelming and incredible. We truly, truly appreciate all the amazing advice, feedback and guidance we received this past month. We are still digging out with all of our follow-ups and reviews!

As far as the team goes, we have had an up-and-down few weeks. We parted ways with our developer, who was just too overcommitted to execute what we needed when we needed it. After a few very tense days of being basically dead in the water, we hired the fabulous Brantley Harris, on the recommendation of Harper Reed. He is (in Harper’s words) a “beast” and has been pounding on our code for the last two weeks.

The upshot of our technical personnel change is that we had to abandon the front-end admin tools. The admin tools have become a “nice to have” versus the “have to have” redesign of the actual app. Which is what we’re cranking on now. Cest’ la vie!

Jeano Verschave also stopped by to brief me on Pivitol Tracker (an agile project management tool), and I’ve been using it for the last week. I’m really liking the system, and I think it will be a great asset to help us get to Demo Day.

I also have to give a shout-out to the good folks at IDEO, who are helping us with our rebranding. I’ll post more on that tomorrow!

-Gretchen