"Huh?"
"We just put it in this locker here."
"Oh, right. Official."
"Yeah, it's pretty official around here."
I'm hungover. Had a lot to drink after the presentation last night. Got to know some people. It's 9am. I'm flying back to London at 1pm but first I have a meeting with a woman at the British Consulate.
I googled her name, read her job description on LinkedIn, but I still have no idea what she does or what I'm doing here. But wow, look at it.
A man leads me though some kind of airlock double door thing. Like, they had to shut the door behind before they could open the door in front.
Me and the guy go into a meeting room and he asks me about Story. I chat about it while we wait for the woman to arrive.
I wonder about asking the guy why I'm here, but decide to keep quiet about that.
The woman arrives and asks me the same stuff about Story as the guy did. She's really friendly. They both are. I tell her about the app and how San Francisco is an amazing city.
I can't tell if she's interviewing me. Or just listening. What does she even do?
I finish talking about Story and kinda do a raised eyebrows 'Soooo yeah, that's Story...' thing to let her know maybe she should speak now.
I think I've done a great job at not showing that I have no idea what I'm doing there.
"Do you know why you're here? What we do?" She asks smiling.
Fuck.
You know what? My hungover brain just can't lie. Not right now.
"No."
It hangs there for a bit. I lean forward as if I'm about tell her a secret, "I have no idea what I'm doing here. I have no idea what you guys do. I even googled you and I still have no idea what the words meant."
She bursts out laughing. I smile but don't want to laugh in case she's laughing at me.
I lean back and turn to the guy. He's smiling.
"Pipeline development, lead generation, channel marketing, high-profile account management, client engagement from C-level to Evangelist, government relations, global competitive intelligence collection & analysis, relationship management, vendor engagement, contract negotiation, dealmaking, and customer-focused product management for global audiences."
That's the actual description of what she does. As if I know.
"Okay that's fine!" She says.
She goes on to explain what she does and I still don't understand most of it. It's something about connecting people in the UK with people in the USA for the benefit of their business. Like a secret agent networker. Yeah, she should just change her description to that.
She then goes on to talk about the industry. And I have probably the most useful conversation I've had to date. She tells me, if we want investment, we need to be using analytics to drive our app forward.
"You think in Farmville, when they'd release some new purple fruit for sale it was just random? No. It was all decided on by using their analytics. They saw the colours people reacted to. They saw which fruit was the most popular across countries. When they'd release some new fruit thing they knew they'd make 10 million dollars that morning."
She knows what she's talking about.
"Who's your tech guy?" She continues.
"Paul?" I reply.
"We'd like to get him to come out to Silicon Valley to meet some people at an event we're doing next month."
"Okay..." What the hell is this meeting, it's crazy.
"You're still very early on in your development. You're not going to get investment yet. I'm sorry, but you're just not. However, I'd like to put you in touch with an angel investor in London. You should have a pint with him. He's more like a super angel investor."
I'm stunned by the amount of information she's throwing at me. After an hour she finally wraps the meeting up.
"You just kinda blew my mind." I say.
"She gets that a lot." The guy says.
