Swapit got accepted into the TGN BootCamp 2015 – and turned it down

Two days ago, the TGN BootCamp 2015 started. A while back, we had applied for the boot camp, because it looked really interesting. It’s practically a 5 day boot camp that started on September 30th and runs until October 4th. Every day, you have the chance to listen to mentors and find out more about their experience over the past years. There is usually also a chance to mingle with those mentors late on each day. You can view the full schedule here.

There was a selection process ran by the TGN folks and about 2 weeks ago we got informed that Swapit got accepted to the TGN Boot Camp. After a lot of thinking and talking about it, we decided to turn down this opportunity.

To be honest, the most interesting part of the Boot Camp, was the demo day on their last day. That would have given us access to a group of investors we haven’t reached out to yet. As we are currently raising funding, this would have fit nicely into our plan.

On the other hand, we already have quite good leads for our fund raising round, but hey … it’s always great to get more feedback. One of the reasons for turning down this opportunity was, that we would have to be present at the TGN Boot Camp location every day. As we are currently heavily involved in product development (e.g. launching our latest Swapit update), talking to our investor leads and are working on our marketplace liquidity, our time during the day is very limited. At the same time, the Boot Camp runs through public holidays and weekends, which I (personally) prefer to spend with my wife and infant daughter (read “A personal take on quitting the matrix” about that). It might feel selfish, but if I don’t have much time to spend with them during the week, I at least need to make the best of it during weekends. So to be frank, that was a factor too.

We all need strike balances in our lives. Sometimes, you just got to do what you got to do. Yet sometimes, you just got to say “no” and move on.

With pretty much everything, I am doing a cost-benefit analysis — where sometimes it can’t be measured in monetary value. In this case, I believe it would have been great for Swapit to get into contact with more potential investors on the Demo Day. It would have also been very valuable to get insights from those great speakers they managed to engage for the 5 boot camp days. I will be trying to connect with them through LinkedIn instead and see if I can get some private meetings. Hopefully, for some folks that’ll work out.

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