The Travelling Programmer

Its 11:30pm right now and I just got off the phone. I was sitting here tinkering with some code looking very glamorous in socks and trackies (aka sweatpants for you yanks) when a polite fellow from Washington rang me. If you'd have previously asked me what the likelihood was that Id be dealing with american telemarketers in the course of my day I would have said zero.

I have in fact been getting increasing amounts of unsolicited emails and now phone calls from all corners of the globe. Not the usual Bangalore call centres or Nigerian bank scams either. Various parts of the US, the UK, Brazil, Spain. All over really. Its quite exciting. I never know what accent will greet me when I answer my phone and what language Ill have to decipher when I open my email.

It might sound annoying but its really not. Not yet anyway. I could see how fielding sales calls in the middle of the night could get old fast but for now the sheer novelty of it has put a smile on my face.

Ive just concocted a theory that the frequency and nature of the unsolicited offers you receive can serve as a barometer for the progress being made by a startup. How many sales people a month call you from companies you've never heard of? How many other startups contact you each month? What stage are they at? After all you'd need a lot of partnership offers from one man bands to balance out one from facebook. Not that I have one from facebook :(

I might add some new columns to the statistics I keep to track comfypage.com.