"Hotels"

Don't you hate when two groups of New World folks are flown by different clients at the same time to the same city and one client puts up their group at the beautiful Intercontinental and the other client puts up their group at Chet's Motor Court.  Fortunately, my group stayed at the Intercontinental. I really hated that.  

“I Am Very Disappointed”

Andrew and I decided to attend the reverse merger conference which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada.   The conference was held at the Palazzo, which, by the way, is spectacular and I highly recommend it.  Thanks to a great friend who has “connections”, we scored unbelievable accommodations in the hotel.  In particular, my room was about 1,500 square feet, had a sunken living room/conference area and two large flat screen televisions.  Andrew’s room – great, but it couldn’t hold a candle to my room.

We arrived the day before the conference began and immediately ran into bankers and companies which we knew.   We had not even registered for the conference yet, and there we were in Las Vegas negotiating potential transactions.  This trip may just pay for itself.

After a couple of hours, Andrew and I decided to take “Andrew’s Grand Tour” of Las Vegas.  Andrew’s Grand Tour consists of sampling the finest martinis (aka Clear Thinkers) up and down the strip.  Just as an aside, it amazing how much time you can spend trying to understand craps after four or five clear thinkers – its still a mystery to me.  I have never been a fan of Las Vegas, but Andrew’s tour of the strip and the major casinos was pretty good. 

The next morning we were pretty groggy, but thought we better register for the conference.  On the way, we ran into more business contacts who immediately joined us in my palatial conference area to began structuring and negotiating a transaction with us.  These negotiations continued until early evening when they moved to the suite of one of the bankers.  Andrew went with them and I remained behind to prepare for a conference call that was scheduled for an hour or two later.  Before leaving, Andrew asked me to text him and remind regarding the call so that he could attend.

Fifteen minutes before the call, I texted Andrew and got no response.  With two minutes to go to call time, Andrew texted back that he was still negotiating.  I texted back sarcastically saying only, “I am disappointed”.  Thirty seconds into the call I heard commotion and running in the hall outside my room.  It sounded as if someone ran past my room and then ran back, followed by hysterical pounding on the door.  There was Andrew, sweating and out of breath, his jacket crumpled in his hands and his shirt untucked.  He said, “I ran as fast as I could from the other suite.  I’m sorry that I’m late. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”  I looked at him and burst out laughing. “I was only kidding”, I told him.  We couldn’t stop laughing and left the conference call on mute most of the time.  Fortunately, we weren’t asked to say very much.  

"We Know People"

Following the closing of our first transaction as a firm, Andrew and I arranged a road show for our client, the CEO of which and a director of which came to New York to meet bankers, lawyers, IR/PR professionals, etc.  Our clients are very good guys and their trip to NYC was filled with all of fun that one would expect from two out-of-towners taking their bite of “The Big Apple”. 

At the meetings, our clients were questioned as to all of the attributes of their company: business model; capital structure; etc.  At first, the initial meeting went well and Andrew and I had little need to intervene in their otherwise smooth presentation.  

Then it happened.  

A banker at the initial meeting asked “So what is your competitive advantage?”.   Based on our prior discussions, the client had numerous factual statements that could have been made in response to this question, any or all of which were true, forthright, and acceptable answers.   Our client simply answered “We know people”.   In response to the banker’s questioning look, and before Andrew or I could interject, our client repeated this answer.  At that moment, the otherwise positive meeting seemed to move through the space-time continuum as Andrew and I looked at each other with a sense of dread.  Silence hung in the air.  After what seemed like an eternity, the banker responded, “I understand.  It’s all personal relationships.  I get it.” 

I think my blood pressure dropped from pre-stroke to low.

Over our objections, the client gave this answer at each of the six meetings with investment bankers which we scheduled over the next two days.  They received indications of interest from five of the six bankers.

The moral of the story:  Irrespective of the amount of preparation, spontaneity and randomness have key roles in the outcome of events.  Stay calm and perhaps an unexpected random bizarre spontaneous answer to an otherwise simple question is the correct answer.