In the words of Joshua Baer and Kevin Landtroop, “Texas, I am in you!” Stopped by a childhood haunt in City of Fort Worth, the famous Kincaid’s Burgers 🍔, and now I’m on the road to #Austin for #SXSW. So SO excited to cheer on the startups for the #SXSWPitch competition happening this week, these teams have worked hard for the past several months and it’s been a real honor serving again this year as a coach for these internationally recognized finalists. I KNOW I have at least one winner in the batch, which is par for the course, I’ve had quite a few over the past almost decade of doing this (“I too, am exceedingly humble”). Which reminds me, on Sunday, a few of us are going to meet up to honor Simon Karmarkar, MBA/DM (also a #SXSWpitch winner!) who passed away only hours after picking up his win last year before leaving Austin. It was a tragedy to lose such a beautiful soul and a great man. He left us on a high note, having pitched us a wonderful business concept which had to close its doors due to the loss — but his memory lives on and I’m celebrating having known him by hosting an NA Brunch this weekend during SX in his honor if you’d like to join us. DM me for details and it’ll be great to have anyone there, whether you knew him or not. A hat tip to his lovely wife and a strong woman, Jennifer Karmarkar, thinking of you this time of year and letting you know many of us are remembering Simon this week so fondly and wish he were here. If you’re in Austin this week, let me know. This is one of the best weeks not for biz dev, but for relationships, making them, strengthening them, enhancing them, appreciating them. You never know when things will change, we have to appreciate this one day at a time. The best way to do that is to keep doing it until the day we can’t. As a side note, #graphs are absolutely critical tools for your big data challenges right now and I would love to tell you more about them when we hang out this week. Find me where you usually spot me, #iykyk, the leather couches at you know where. 🚀 Much love, I’ll see many of you very soon! (Actually written by 🪶 Molly Cain)
Wheeeeeeerrrrrrreeeeeeee
🪶 Molly Cain thank you for honoring Simon’s memory in such a lovely and fitting way. He LOVED brunch! When he learned he had been selected to pitch MasRefund at SXSW, he was literally over the moon. Winning in his category was the icing on the cake. I know he will be cheering on everybody during their pitches this week.