Contact – Daniel 34

 

For back story go here: Story so far, and definitely this one.]

[Relevant back story links also within text.]

Daisy had gone back to school. She had only just gone back to school but it still presented clear water for Daniel and he was determined to make the most of it. With a to do list as long as his arm, and a whole host of fantastic things to satisfy those demands, he dropped off Daisy with a happy heart and no negativity from the parents or teachers he saw. He returned home with the expectation of getting things done as he had never got things done before – or at least as he had never got things done for the past fortnight.

On his side was a fabulous list of new markets and the bare bones of some marketing strategies that would begin to make new in roads for Together... Apart, both before and after Christmas. Daniel had high hopes, buoyed up by an excited phonecall with Trinny – maybe a bit too excited – so he decided to sound out some old contacts and start paving the way for the next stage of getting the app out there and used.

He began by sorting through a bunch of LinkedIn contacts and outlining to them what he was working on. He needed to check whether his thoughts about the market were realistic. Then he turned to his personal email contacts and sorted out the most likely help resources from there. These included people who were already working in the areas he wanted to reach, and one of two old colleagues who could give him tips on marketing in general.

As morning became afternoon, the results of this primary outreach work began to filter back.

"Hi Daniel," said an email from Darren, "Good to hear from you. Delivery people are a pretty good market for your app, but for one thing. They’re busy delivering stuff. So your app might provide them with backup and everything, and maybe even some kind of diversion, but then do they need a diversion? Bear in mind they’re either: picking up parcels for delivery, driving to places to deliver things to, delivering those things as best they can (shoving through letter boxes, finding ‘safe places’, finding neighbours, running from dogs). If you reckon they have time to look at your thing while doing that you might be OK, but to be honest I’m not sure (it being Christmas and stuff). This might mean talking to the people they’re delivering for of course, but  then… They’re probably going to want their people to pay attention to their tech rather than yours…”

And so it went on. And on. And on. Daniel suspected Darren didn’t actually have anything else to do this morning and he’d provided him with a nice diversion as well. It wasn’t the most encouraging of responses, but Daniel was prepared to ignore it.

The second one in was a little more blunt, although not because of the question set.

“Daniel. Wondered when you’d be crawling out the woodwork. What the hell is this junk you’re working on? Some bizarre app thing? Everyone thinks they’ll take over the world with these things, but to be honest I reckon you and everyone else has missed the boat. You want my advice? Steer clear. Go for AI, machine learning, true business to business tech and get the right thing. Apps schmapps! It’s all over bar the shouting and everyone’s got too many already.”

Dan scanned over the rest of the piece, alighting only on the final: “But there again, if it does take off, let me know and I’ll come on board and give you some real help.”

A swift piece of research revealed this contact had been out of work for the past six months and to be honest Daniel wasn’t surprised.

Daniel then received a phonecall from Nadia. Ex-girlfriend Nadia who he’d not heard from since a night in July when she’d left staking out Chrissy’s house.

“This is a surprise,” said Daniel, mastering the understatement perfectly.

“I thought it might be,” said Nadia. “How are you keeping?”

“Oh, erm, OK. Sort of.”

“You sent me an email,” said Nadia. “I don’t think you meant to, mainly because it was addressed to ‘Tony’ but, you know.”

The two shot the breeze for a while semi-catching up, but also almost sussing out each other, trying to judge exactly where they were at. Nadia was pleased to hear Daniel was looking after Daisy, if only because it meant he wasn’t still outside Chrissy’s house.

“It’s nice to hear you,” said Daniel. “Even if it was by mistake.”

“Not entirely by mistake,” said Nadia. “Your email got me interested.”

“Why?” asked Daniel. “I should warn you I don’t think we should get back together and this is a small company running the app – not many openings.”

“Oh, I’m not looking for a job,” said Nadia. “I have a job. One you might be interested in it.”

“Oh yes?”

“I’m a dog walker,” she said.