Tonight, we are going to meet with an important investor – one of two who funded DoOrder’s initiation. On the one hand, I am excited to meet him for the purpose of getting to know the man and making myself known to him. On the other hand, I’m also aware that the topic at hand will be DoOrder and our work on the project. Because of that, it’s important that I enter the evening’s affairs with an idea of what he might be interested in talking about.

Frankly, and not just because it’s my focus area, I think he’ll be most interested in discussing plans for expansion. An investor wants his or her money to grow, and the best way to ensure that outcome is for the company itself to grow. For that reason, I expect he’ll be inclined to engage with me on my ideas on the matter.

However, today during our second Zoom meeting with Diane and some other DoOrder founders, I began to feel a subtle sense that Diane doesn’t actually want me to pursue my expressed path. I gave her a basic rundown of what it is I aim to complete. She was beginning to offer her own perspective, which was evidently different, except she was cut off by the timed end of the Zoom call. To my confusion, we did not initiate a second call to pick up where we left off.

What I took away from the little that she did manage to say about my piece is that she doesn’t have much idea of what she wants. DoOrder’s most profitable client at the moment is a retailer named Smyth’s Toys. She says she wants to follow them and their locations. She also says she doesn’t want to bother expanding further outward within Ireland, because the country is so sparsely populated and would offer little demand. I did some research after the meeting. Smyth’s Toys only has locations in Ireland.

I think Diane has conjectured opinions of what might be good and what might be bad. That won’t work. I must concede, however, that what I had been planning to offer was also going to be somewhat arbitrary conjecture. It just would have been a little better focused. I have new ideas as to what I can offer her, which I’ll mention during tonight’s dinner. Hopefully, my conversation with her can be shared by the investor, who will provide his input and comment on my ideas.