“I like you, Brett. And I really like what you’re (company is) doing,” Jack, the Venture Capitalist, said to me. “However, I think I’ll wait until you have a VP Engineering before I invest.”
In my pitch I had been upfront with Jack that we were looking for a VP Engineering, and, in the interim, I would act as the VP Engineering. However, even though I had an engineering background, and I had managed engineering teams before, I wasn’t a VP Engineering.
“I totally understand, Jack,” I said. We shook hands, and I left his office.
“Julius”, our previous VP Engineering, had left six months earlier, and I had been looking for his replacement since. Jack knew that, but he didn’t know that I’d been speaking with Jeroen about becoming our VP Engineering.
Unless you’re a technical genius, you’ll need a VP Engineering or CTO before you’ll get funded.
Jeroen was exactly the right person to join us. His technical background was spot on, he had twenty years experience building the type of team we needed, and he was a cultural fit for our company. Plus, Jeroen was fanatical about building the exact same company I wanted to build.
But I wasn’t ready to tell Jack that he was joining us until Jeroen and I agreed to…
