Lot’s to talk about.  The November Louisville Venture Club presentation went well.  We established a couple of good contacts that day and are working hard towards establishing additional contacts.  I have more than a few people that I need to call or follow up with and that’s a good sign.

About the only thing I can say about presentations is to be ready to do them, the old fashioned way, sans technology.  At the LVC practice session, I was told to have my presentation down to 5 minutes and no more.  I did that in my practice runs after the meeting but it depended upon flawless transitions from slide to slide.  I should have cut more out because as late as 20 seconds before my presentation, I was readying plan B (tm) for my presentation.  That plan was to literally say “change slide” in between the spots where my presentation called for a slide transition.  There went the flow of my presentation and say hello to an additional minute of transition time.  *sigh*  All ended up well in the end because as I was being introduced, the tech guy figured out how to make the pointer work.  Needless to say, if I was nervous leading up to the presentation, the tech issues didn’t help matters.  Everything went off without a hitch.  My presentation only went over time by six seconds and we received universally good feedback on the pitch.  Oh and before I get off this topic.  If you’re given the opportunity to pitch first in a group, always pitch first or you run the risk of everyone falling asleep from the guys in front of you and from the lunch they just ate.

After the November meeting, I met with Chrysalis Ventures and with Aspectx.  Aspectx is going to help us reach out to other cities and help us with contacts here in the city.  We’re working closely to schedule pitches after the New Year and I’m confident this will work for us.  I went into the meeting with Chrysalis Ventures knowing full well that we were not going to be funded by them directly.  EPI is not the type of portfolio company they are looking for.  After a good two hour meeting, I left their offices with more than I had hoped.  They told me that if I could come up with the names of the firms I was going to pitch with prototype in hand, they would see if there was someone in those firms that they knew.  Referrals are always better than cold calling.  While neither of these have provided fruit yet, they are far from exhausted lead sources.

Lastly, we should hear about the Vogt award submission and the KEF investment award is getting closer every day.  Keep your fingers crossed that one of these comes through for us as it will get us started in the right direction. 

That’s my update for now.  As always, you’ll know more as soon as I can say something about it.  I hope that everyone of our American fans had a great Thanksgiving and I hope that everyone has a great Christmas.  Blog posts have dropped recently but they will pick up again in short order.  Enjoy.