The Term Sheet | Wattys 2016 Winner

Chapter 36

After Pitch Deck, David received 112 congratulatory emails from friends, family and strangers, 92 consolation emails, also from friends, family and strangers, 243 sales inquiries predominantly from IT vendors and outsourced programming companies in India, 23 emails from eager job seekers who wanted to work for David, and 6 investors asking for opportunities to get to know David better.

The task of going through all of these emails felt overwhelming. It took him three days to respond to each and every one. At least the ones that weren't clearly spam. It was painstaking, but if all these people had spent their time reaching out to him, the least he could do was offer a personal response.

The investors mostly seemed to be wealthy individuals who wanted to do an angel investment. However, two of them seemed to be part of a venture capital firm. One of the signatures said he was an associate and the other said he was a general partner. He emailed the investors with a similar note thanking them for their interest in his company and suggesting a few dates for a phone call, but Frank Atari, the general partner from Rocketship Ventures, was the first to respond. Frank asked if David could jump on a Cryptobit chat session with him for a minute.

Welcome to Cryptobit, Dangerboy

Initializing Encryption: DONE

Initializing Spoof Spamming: DONE

Verifying Encryption: DONE

Verifying Spoof Spamming: DONE

Your channel is secure. To verify, please start the conversation with the word: Apple

Your chat partner should reply with the word: Banana

Dangerboy: Apple

Atari: Banana

Dangerboy: Nice to meet you

Atari: The pleasure is all mine.

Dangerboy: How can I help you?

Atari: Look, David. Let me cut to the chase. I have been following you for a while now. I have known about you since your Hacker News post and landing page. You can look up my account name, I am one of your first users.

Atari: Security and privacy are a big passion of mine, and when I saw you on Pitch Deck, I knew that I needed to be involved.

Dangerboy: That wasn't my proudest moment.

Atari: Their loss is my gain. How's the email version of Cryptobit coming?

Dangerboy: Almost done, I've been using it for a while and I think I have worked out most of the bugs.

Atari: Good. Come to my office on Thursday. I'm based in Seattle so it shouldn't be hard. Meet me and my partners. Let's see if we can't make something happen.

Dangerboy: Ok.

Atari: Great, I will call you tomorrow to prepare. Send me the deck you've been using and I can give you comments.

David didn't know what to expect when he pulled up to the Rocketship Ventures office building in Bellevue, Washington, but he surely thought it would be more grand and awe inspiring than the nondescript building in front of him. But it made sense. Venture capitalists were just normal businessmen like lawyers, bankers or accountants. They were all about the bottom line, not pomp and circumstance.

He made his way up the concrete stairs and to the second-floor office and saw dozens of beige cubicles sprinkled on either side of a wide open carpeted space. He walked to the front desk and smiled at a slender receptionist who was on a phone call. She reminded David of a young librarian, talking quietly and in hushed tones.