For the past several months, I’ve been pouring huge amounts of time and money into a top secret project I am sure will revolutionize the internet.  My crack team of developers and I have been putting in the time at just about every bar in the greater Los Angeles area for meetings/drinking challenges as well as late at night on ICQ for all-night programming sessions.

It looks like development will be complete in early 2007, so I’ve been scrambling around submitting business plans to venture capitalists and contacting marketing consultants to figure out exactly what a successful launch of this new application is going to cost.

The new application I am speaking of will ideally serve as a module to an existing social networking site, and will completely change the way social networking is done.  Naturally, I’ve been in contact with several large, established social networking sites pitching the idea and, ultimately, asking for a large amount of marketing capital.

I had my first conference call with a certain large social networking site today.  I would love to mention exactly what site this was, but unfortunately I am not able to until I figure out whether or not they have decided to allow me to offer my application on their platform.  I can, however, give you the story of an amazing standoff that I had on this conference call.

The call was scheduled for 2pm, at which time a business partner and I made our way to the conference room of a Santa Monica office with notes in hand.  I was packing notes containing exciting regression analysis figures and recent test reports which would combine with my excellent business plan to produce a partnership slam dunk.  Or so I thought.

I was a little nervous when the AT&T Business operator connected us with a room full of product development VPs from this social networking site, but I started in quickly with my pitch.

‘Yes, we have read the information that you have given us thus far, but today we are interested in learning the details of the extension you are proposing,’ a voice from the other end said.

‘The nature of this application is somewhat confidential.  Since development is not fully complete at this time, we have not yet filed the appropriate forms to request our US patent, so I have to request that all members of negotiations sign a non-disclosure agreement before I proceed with further details.  I can have this non-disclosure agreement faxed over to your office right now if you would like to take a five minute break,’ I replied.

‘I don’t know if we agree that a non-disclosure agreement is necessary at this point.  Could you please try to provide further details without being overly specific?’

‘I do not feel comfortable discussing anything beyond the fact that this application can serve as a module to an existing social networking community and the potential revenue streams associated with this application as I have projected.’

‘Well we really cannot proceed with discussions until we at least hear the nature of your idea.’

‘I understand that, but I am not comfortable describing the workings of my idea until I receive a signed non-disclosure agreement.’

‘We are not interested in signing a non-disclosure agreement until we believe that we can benefit from the integration of this application.’

‘Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to discuss any further details until I receive a signed non-disclosure agreement.’

The conversation went on like this for several more minutes while I got more and more annoyed.  The call finally ended when another conference call was scheduled for next week.  There was no commitment made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

So basically, I wasted most of my day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Technical Writings, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.