After over a decade I was back in Washington DC on Sunday. And it is not even far: I live in New York City. It was a trip made for Sagoon. (सगुनको महत्त्व)
Unlike NYC, Washington DC obviously is a city that sleeps. I arrived in the wee hours of morning and it felt like I had the entire city just for me. I walked around. I spent a few hours at The National Mall (my favorite "mall" in America since I have never been big on shopping) taking in The White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol. For the first time I took the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument. It was a mini version of a trip to the top of the Empire State Building. DC is small and compact and nice.
There was not time to go for long walks in the city like I had wanted, or the trips inside the biggest museums in the world. I had really wanted to go to the Martin Luther King Memorial. But I only got to see it from the top of the Washington Monument.
After noon I got picked up by the Washington Monument by a nephew of Kabindra Sitaula. It was a family lunch at Kabinji's place, half an hour drive away. It was a large gathering of his extended family. I needled him by asking if he had any relatives left back in Nepal!
The 3 PM event is what I was in town for. One by one the crowd gathered. And the presentations began. During Govinda Giri's presentation I saw so much love from among the seed investors in Sagoon, that was a major energy boost to me when it was my turn to speak. I felt like I blew it out of the water.
My job was to reassure these early investors that round 2 fundraising will very likely happen since I was the man in charge. All I needed was a rapidly growing active user base. And they should perhaps go ahead and put some more money in and be done with the first round already. The server budget going up is precisely what we want, precisely what we have been working for. Open up the flood gates already.
Govinda, Kabin and I had dinner together later at a Chinese place. And then Kabinji dropped me off at Union Station for my overnight trip back to New York City. I realized I must have become a local in NYC after all these years because I kept looking for those food carts on the roadside (in DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia) for a quick soda, but they did not exist!
The money is not in until the checks have been issued and cashed, and so the public announcement will be made when it will be made, but I think yesterday was a wonderful day for the final push to get done with round one already!
