Yesterday, my brain ceased to function for about 3 minutes. It was scary stuff.
I was supposed to meet with a VC about Path101 (or is it Path 101? Space or no space?) and they e-mailed me saying their flight was two hours late. So, I figured that was the end of the meeting and replied that we could talk on the phone in the next few days. I was at the Web 2.0 Meetup at Slate and I was starving. So, I ordered myself a chicken panini with gouda.
Fifteen minutes later, the VC calls while in a cab coming over from a meeting in Jersey City and asks if I'm available to meet for dinner. He had dinner scheduled originally with someone else, but he was going to bail on it to meet with me.
Here's where the 3 minutes begins.
I told him that I had ordered a little while ago and suggested maybe we could meet up after our respective dinners.
When I got back to my conversion with Kristian, he said to me, "So a VC that you really want to work with offers to cancel his dinner to meet with you, and you pass because of a nine dollar panini?"
"Oh... wait... . jeez... That was really stupid wasn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Dammit... I gotta go call him back... what was I thinking?"
I'll tell you what I was thinking... I didn't want to waste food. Years of my mom scooping extra servings on my plate so that she didn't have to throw anything out just hardwired themselves into my brain, cementing a pattern that would be highly sub-optimal in this situation.
So I paid and bailed on the panini... told the waitress to enjoy it... and left for dinner after calling him back to let him know I was totally free to meet up if it was still on the table. Thank God it was.
"Yeah... I could have had a $500 million exit... if it wasn't for that $9 ($12 with tax and tip) panini."