The Kahuna Zone @The Refiners #week2

Oct. 2, 2017.

This was it…

Friday, PARISOMA, all together, waiting for our session of “glad sad mad” where you actually have to say if you are glad, sad…. or mad.

I chose to be “glad” because I suppose I’m never sad and only the carpet dog down Haight street makes me mad when I can’t do anything but walk either on it or cross the street even though my bus stop is just 10 meters away…. damn, just thinking of it makes me mad…. anyway !

This Friday, we could have all said “mad” within the TimeFunding team, because this week, we tasted the bitterness of the program. The part where people come to you and say : “your idea is kinda nice… the way you draw this logo is kind of okay… the rest stinks !”

And now you’ve read that, you are of course wondering “but what the hell happened last week ?”… well I’ll tell you ! (and if you don’t, still continue to read, it’s a blast !)

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“don’t change A thing, change everything !”

…….

The week had started perfectly well. Considering that before the weekend, we had a nice time with a branding and marketing specialist that had ended the interview with us in these words : “Yeah, guys, you know : you should change your company name”… Well that not only made our day, but also our weekend so, basically, this is why Monday was a great day : reboot day.

It worked actually : being part of this program makes you feel like you are not alone… you ‘know’ you are going through the same things as any of the 11 other startups here… or then again, you pretend that’s true and it still helps !

Then came the end of the day on Monday ! Just as a reminder of the previous Friday, we were told something that was going to make our day (again !) : “guys ! you should pivot a little.”

Ok : well, let’s !

New name, new product… at least I got to keep my birth name ! Mom’s gonna be relieved !

And this is more or less what week #2 looked like on a professional level.

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We needed some genuine local fun after a day like this, and because we know how to party, we ended up the next evening in a chinatown garage with 50 geeks and entrepreneurs, in a meet-up about the blockchain and crypto currencies…

Alcohol, strippers and coke everywhere !

Oh, no, my mistake, totally different party. For this one, we had to pay 10 dollars for cooked orange juice with no taste and a tortilla crisps.

But during an interlude, a nice and large opera singer, came out of nowhere and started singing Gershwin and some other parts of the Cats musical.

Entertaining enough… we went to bed this very evening wondering if we could have put “her” on a blockchain… silly thoughts, you know… but then again, I’m French, so I figure it makes sense.

…….

Wednesday came with its surprises too.

It’s now been a week since we opened a US bank account at a famous international bank, and we were supposed to receive our credit and debit cards momentarily. And we did. And if there is something you can say about banks and bankers it’s this : they get the job done. It’s always an impeccable organization and a remarquable result. So yes, we did receive our 4 cards…. in Paris.

We had a great laugh about it, until we realized we wouldn’t be able to shop online on most of the delivery apps here, that the money we had put on the account wasn’t going to be of use for another few days/weeks maybe and we even started to wonder wether it had been a good idea to even open a US account if it were to be able to use it in December ! Who said banks were not fun ?

Wednesday was a great day to feel happy because of the heat wave, so in a way, it was okay to have a laugh about our bank… (it always is actually !)

It was so hot ! Felt like summer all over again… and being as English as my French passport allows me to be, I felt life flooding in my veins again my friend ! We -english born people- need the sun to remind us of how lucky we are to have tea and Ribena… and time to go to the south of France for the summer holidays.

The Sun. It’s been now three weeks I got here with my girls (and by “my girls”, I mean, my wife and my three and a half daughters, you naughty readers !) and I can hardly recall a rainy day…

Interesting, don’t you think ? The weather topic… You know since I’m bold, I don’t ever go to the hair dresser anymore, so, cut me some slack ! I gotta share about the weather from time to time, right ? Who doesn’t !?

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By the end of the week, everything was back to normal. And Friday I was glad.

My second daughter turned 6 that day. The weirdness of the week had been processed and digested… and we were so lucky to have a “tcha tcha lesson” by the team of The Refiners themselves ! Special thanks to Pierre who’s a natural born dancer !

Even if we didn’t make it to the Kahuna Zone, we were glad. I’m keeping the explanation of the Kahuna Zone for later… or never : it’s a secret thing !

And of course, we went to see the Giants win the last game of the season on Sunday, and let’s face it, for foreigners, US sports are always entertaining : it’s another dimension ! And Baseball is less of a sleeping pill than Cricket… oooopsy !! (yeah, I know, this thing with me saying “i’m english” all the time can’t stand this last sentence… but you know what ? I’m half French, so that would explain this a little, don’t you think ?)

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Now we are entering week #3 with a lot of expectations and, I’m sure, a lot of extremely interesting things to tell you by the end of the week !

….wondering what’s the weather gonna be like next week…..

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Yours truly. Nash & The Nashettes :)