Today I was driving back from a board meeting for the Parkway School District Spark incubator program. The meeting was a 3 hour sumit of St. Louis business excutives with the purpose of designing an educational program that would accept 15 young students intereted in getting involved in entreprenurship into a year long program.
While in the meeting, I received an email from Arch Grants notifying me that RoverTown was the recipient of the $100,000 follow on grant. I thought about the signifigance of this, as I often do, in pich form. What I mean by that is I developed a pitch in my head to present this news in the best light possible.
Here is the pitch (let me know what you think): RoverTown was selected from over 707 applications from around the world as one of 20 winners to receive a $50,000 Arch Grant. That means RoverTown fell into the top 3% of all aplicants. Today, RoverTown was selected as one of two companies (out of the origional 20 winners) to receive the $100,000 follow on grant funding. This now places RoverTown in the top .02%.
After saying that pitch over in my head. I called my mom & dad to give them the good news. I presented the pitch to my parents and my mother began yelling with joy. After some congratuatory bantor back and fourth I hung up the phone and stared at the road as I drove back to RoverTown HQ in downtown STL.
My stomach growled and I realized that I hadn’t ate any food all day. I needed to locate some food, any food, fast.
It was at this moment 5 p.m. traffic stopped me at a light and I looked in the review mirror. I stared myself directly in the eyes and it hit me– I see a world with RoverTown.
Not the RoverTown that I know and love today but something bigger. Something far greater. Something bigger than me or any of the other RoverTeamers. It is our job to bring this to the world.