reecepacheco

July?! What happened to June? Oh yeah, I traveled so much that I literally didn’t stay in one bed for more than 3 days at a time!

Any VC’s reading this are already thinking “cry me a river.”  Trust me, I’m not writing to complain. In fact, I loved it! Sure it messes with my work/sleep/diet/exercise routines, but I got to meet some awesome people - and as I’ve said before, it’s best to make connections early and often.

I’m just going to tell you about the highlights (and the coolest people!):

Hanging with our investor Allen Morgan and his family, our fellow Brown online-video entreprenurs from Wistia, and our former professor in engineering and entrepreneurship at the Brown Campus Dance (Providence, RI) for my 5th reunion!

Meeting Larry Probst - former CEO of EA Sports, current US Olympic Committee Chairman and just an awesome guy!  We had a great discussion about HomeField and he’s made some intros for us already.

Out to Seattle, and more specifically Gig Harbor for Mark and Aubrey’s wedding (click for pics).  Such a fun time and a beautiful area (look at that sunset!)

I made it back to NYC for a meeting with Peter Horan (another great, smart guy) and then took off for LA for a few angel meetings and more importantly - a meeting with the head of Yahoo! Sports, Kyle Laughlin. I like their thoughts for the future and am excited to work with them going forward.  And of course it was great to crash with my study abroad buddies Mike and Rafe! We had dinner at Wurstkurche in Downtown LA - if you like beer and bratwurst, and Belgian fries - you gotta go!

Then it was back to the East coast for a meeting with serial entrepreneur Chris Hassett on… Cape Cod? Yup! Who knew I had a successful veteran entrepreneur in my hometown?!

Took a quick trip to BOS to meet with Todd McCormack - angel investor and super smart exec at IMG - then back to NYC for a bunch of meetings, but particularly productive was catching up with Matt Minoff, CEO of Nabbr, and then Andrew Montgomery at Mesa Global.  Both really sharp young guys navigating this tech/media world well.

I made it back up to Cape Cod for the weekend so I could work a party at my parents’ restaurant in celebration of San Juan’s Day (a popular holiday among the Portuguese). Such a fun night!  (That’s me in my Azorean soccer jersey with my Vavo!).

Another quick trip to BOS after that, this time to meet Dustin Dolginow of Atlas Venture. For a “junior guy” at a VC firm, Dustin already shows lots of promise. He started out as an entrepreneur, so he knows what it’s like being on my side of the table, and he listens well so he can understand the problem, the market and the potential.

Back down to NYC again for meetings with Pat Battle - top brass at Collegiate Licensing Company which later sold to IMG where he now heads up their college division. Even though we met in a busy midtown hotel lobby, we had a great chat about sports media and business.

Then I headed over to RRE to meet with Eric Weisen. I’d seen Eric’s name on AVC.com comment threads and always appreciated his thoughts, but had never met him. Glad I did. Eric is smart, realistic and straightforward without being a know-it-all.

Finally, I got back to Cape Cod - home sweet home - and spent a couple hours at the beach with my sister a.k.a. @OmGal talking about strategies as she builds her personal brand at OmGal.com.  We took some fun pics, too!  

It wouldn’t last long though - before I knew it - Dustin Dolginow hooked me up with tickets to the Red Sox - 7 rows behind home plate, courtesy of Atlas Venture! Along with us was Jameel Khalfan of Globespan Capital and Chase Garbarino, founder of Pinyadda. Afterward, I invited my friends John Gillis (future MIT Sloan student) and Charley Cummings (current HBS student), and we all had a great talk about tech, startups, business. I can’t wait to do it again soon.

There have been countless other people I’ve met with, spoken with, danced with and more - but this post is long enough! It’s been a fun month being on the road, though I’m glad to be settled for a while so I can get some momentum going in my own work.

Finally, I have to say thanks to everyone who’s helped me out - for the intros, the lunches and dinners, events, couches to sleep on, etc. - it’s really nice to be able to travel all over the world and still feel at home.

And a special thanks to @daisyames for hitting the road with me and helping every step of the way!  (I think she’s trying to run away!)

By the numbers: Starting the last weekend in May when we went to RI AND moved Daisy from NYC to New Haven, my schedule has been: NYC, RI, NYC, CT, NYC, SEA, NYC, LA, CC (Cape Cod), BOS, CC, BOS, CT, NYC, CC, BOS, NYC, CC, BOS, CC.  

20 stops in 34 days!

Just an FYI: if it’s quiet over here, it’s because I’ve been working on our company blog lately: telling our story from day one, announcing some new partners, handling all the PR for HomeField and dropping posts on new features like this (with video!).  

Check it out once in a while.  Who knows?  You may learn something.