Much has happened over the past month. I will lay it all out in something resembling chronological order. We added four full-time employees to our team. To accommodate the majority, we moved April’s monthly company fun day into May, such that we got to have two team-building events for May. For the first one, we watched the – decidedly ridiculous, but very fun – movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent starring Nicholas Cage and Pedro Pascal. Nathan setup a projector screen in the basement at Shedpoint (where we sublease our space) and screened a double feature with a pizza lunch intermission. My kids had been up throughout the previous night and I was exhausted, so I ducked out before the second film (Law Abiding Citizen), but it was a good time.

I got to meet Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek when she dropped by Shedpoint to do a roundtable with small business owners. We had several meetings with our IRAP rep scoping out a potential government-funded R&D project – to the tune of a multi six-figure budget! The project is not yet fully approved, but it is in the assessment phase now, meaning (thankfully) the paperwork is all done.

Dan and I had meetings with a broker for “key person insurance”. We’re very important, you see, so if we die, we want to make sure that our families and the business are compensated in our absence. The intention is not to provoke our murders, hopefully, but more to cover various circumstances in which we die or otherwise become incapacitated. These meetings were actually rather fun, as I had lots of edge case scenario questions, such as, what if I murder Dan and then kill myself? I was under the impression that life insurance did not pay out in the event of suicide, but this is no longer the case! Apparently, insurance has become so competitive, that providers will now pay out the full value of a policy if the insured takes their own life. But there’s a catch: there is a two-year delay before the funds are administered. I suppose this is to prevent people from thinking they can trade-in their life to solve a short term or immediate monetary challenge? Interesting, regardless of the reasoning. The other scenario that was surprising to learn about was that insurance does not pay out if the insured is incarcerated. Naturally, I had to ask what happens if you are leaving the prison, but then the big steel door slides down from the ceiling, guillotining you into two pieces, with one portion landing inside and the other part of you falling outside. Does the policy pay out only on the percentage of your person which escapes the confines of the penitentiary? Still waiting for an answer on this one.

Plenty else happened besides, but those were certainly some of the highlights.

Now, I’m going to focus in on the last two weeks specifically, because they were particularly jam-packed with notable events. Let’s take ourselves back to the weekend of May 24/25. There I was, at the culmination of my half-marathon training, having run 380 km over the past five months, plus 80 km of cycling and a bit of other cross-training here and there. Did I feel awesome? No, sadly. I actually felt pretty crumby. My latest long run had been a struggle, and – despite dramatically tapering off the frequency and intensity of runs for my final week of training – my leg muscles had been sore all week. Unfortunately, waking up Sunday morning (race day) saw no change in my condition, and the race itself was a terrible slog. The weather was great. The event itself was incredibly well orchestrated. But my body said, “Not today!” I did finish the race, but it was not an experience I would care to repeat (despite the enthusiasm on display in the following photo).

On the Tuesday following the race, I had a massage, and I told my massage therapist about my leg pain leading up to the run. She theorized that I may be coming down with something. That night, I awoke at 1:30 AM with an agonizingly sore throat, leading me to the all too rationale conclusion that my massage therapist is a witch! A week later, my physiotherapist (apparently, I see a lot of therapists. I should bring this up with my psychotherapist.) corroborated the impending illness diagnosis that my wiccan masseuse had originated. I guess my massage therapist’s hypothesis had been correct after all, and she may, in fact, not have been a witch. Too bad the mob of angry villagers had already gotten to her…

This all begs the question, why on Earth am I trying to fit long distance running into my life right now? Well, I have Dan’s wife, Elke, to thank for that. Elke was intent on running a marathon this year, and after extensive research, she landed on Amsterdam as the one to run. Back in December, Dan messaged me to say that Elke would be running the Amsterdam Marathon, and that Spiel Essen, the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention, was happening in Germany the following weekend – just a two-hour train ride away! Well, Dan and I have been meaning to get over to Europe for years now, and Spiel Essen seemed like the perfect opportunity. As an afterthought, Dan sent me the link to the marathon registration page. I have run marathons in the past, so I thought, “Sure, it’d be nice to have something to train for.” Graeme, you fool – you don’t actually have time for this! And now here we are. But actually, Elke, you have my sincere gratitude; I am certainly in better shape than I would otherwise be as a direct result of your athletic ambition.

Right, back to the plot. So, there I was, post half marathon, and fighting a cold. I took the Wednesday off work, then figured I should head into the office to collect my laptop on Thursday morning so that I could work from home. Classic mistake. I got pulled into back-to-back-to-back meetings, and in between two of these, Ryan Corry (CEO of Shedpoint) poked his head into my office to ask if I was up for doing an interview with Global News Calgary to talk about the latest US tariff announcement. Now, you must understand that I wasn’t exactly in a “camera ready” state at this point, but I said, “Sure, why not.” Hilariously, and by pure serendipity, the journalist who showed up to conduct the interview was none other than Drew Stremick, one of my best friends. This is worth a brief tangent, as it was one of those delightful full-circle moments.

Four years ago, Drew was embarking upon a big career change-up. A journeyman red seal electrician, Drew had decided to go back to school to get a diploma in media broadcasting, hoping to eventually land a career as a news journalist. In my own life, I was preparing for the commercial launch of TCG Machines and sales of the PhyzBatch-9000 card sorting robot. I wanted to shoot a video with one of my beta trial customers. So, Drew – who had student access to all the videography equipment – and I hauled a bunch of camera gear up to Edmonton and shot the testimonial video together. Fast-forward to now, and Drew (a bonified news media journalist) comes into TCG Machines’ corporate headquarters to record a news interview with me as a local business owner.

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as long-form writing ADHD, but if there is, I totally have it.

OK, at this point in the story, it is now Friday, May 30th, and it is our second company fun day for the month! The day’s activity? A collaborative bomb defusal game by the name of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. Matt orchestrated the event, and it was a riotous good time. Effectively, you break up into teams with one person on each team being the “The Defuser”, and the rest of the team being “The Experts”. The Defuser looks at a screen depicting a bomb, and needs to describe what they see to their team of Experts. The Experts, who are equipped with an instruction manual (in the form of puzzles) must quickly relay the correct information back to The Defuser so that they may disarm the bomb before it goes off. Does this sound stressful? It was, but in a ridiculous and cathartic way – “good stress”, if you will. Here’s a handful of pictures from that event.

Right, so we’ve covered a bit of ground here, but we’re not done yet! Back at the beginning of April, we were invited to participate in a “pitch deck event” hosted by IG Wealth Management, which would be happening on June 2nd. Details were scant, but it sounded like an interesting opportunity, so I signed us up to attend. As some background, Dan and I had been considering raising capital in the second half of last year, and so we had created a pitch deck for TCG Machines and made several contacts in the local investor ecosystem. As luck would have it, our new pricing model in combination with a bumper sales year allowed us to self-fund all the initiatives we had planned, so, we found ourselves in the most fortuitous position of not actually needing investor capital. Regardless, neither Dan nor I had done a pitch before, so it seemed like a great opportunity to test ourselves (and you never know what the needs of tomorrow will be, so further exposure to investors can’t really be a bad thing).

As the event drew closer (i.e. 10 days prior), further details were provided, and it was revealed that the event would actually be a competition! Not only that, there was to be a hard time limit (strictly enforced) of seven minutes for each pitch, with an additional three minutes reserved for questions. We had originally designed our pitch deck to accompany a 20-minute presentation, but hey, better to be trimming down than bulking up. Anywho, IG needed the final slides, in PowerPoint presentation format, submitted by end of day Tuesday (May 27), so I parred our deck down to the bare essentials and submitted it on Monday night. And so it was that after a week encompassing a half marathon, getting sick, a news interview, and bomb defusal (oh, and there were several IRAP meetings and a couple of facility tours that I forgot to mention), I found myself heading into the weekend needing to re-write and rehearse a much abridged pitch in time to present it for Monday evening.

Monday rolled around, and Dan and I went over the pitch presentation a few times together. At this point in time, I was still fighting a cold and my voice was threatening to quit on me. Not ideal. Then, I had to go to a semi-emergency dental appointment, as a filling I had done the previous week was causing me some significant discomfort. The dentist offered to redo the filling on the spot, but this would involve freezing my mouth, and this was at 2:30 PM the day of the competition. So, I declined, and opted to move it to the following week (which is now tomorrow, as of this writing). Also, if you’re wondering what I was doing going to the dentist with a cold, I did make them fully aware of my condition, and they were still fine to see me on account of them wearing masks – but I do appreciate your concern. And then it was time! Dan and I headed downtown to the Brookfield Place tower, Calgary’s tallest building, where the competition was to be held.

Once we arrived, we discovered that the layout of the event was not at all what I had envisioned. I was expecting a stage in an auditorium, where the whole process would be open to all participants. But no, it was a much more intimate and – in my view – intimidating arrangement. Each of the 11 companies which were pitching were to enter, one at a time, into a large boardroom with a U-shaped table, around which about 20 investors and high-profile executives (the judges) were seated. Now, I am not a pretentious person, and I put about as much stock in fashion as I do in astrology (which is to say, none), but it was impossible not to notice that Dan and I were the only ones in T-shirts. I suppose when you are placed in a room with people who represent billions of dollars in collective wealth, you’re meant to dress to impress. Not us, though. What shoes was I wearing? The same ones I’m wearing now, these guys:

Our turn to present came around, and we headed into the dragons’ den (or shark tank, for our American friends). Despite all our preparation, I froze up no fewer than three times! Luckily, Dan was there to offer me prompts, and the two of us still managed to nail the presentation time limit, wrapping up at exactly seven minutes. Questions? There were many, but the assembly seemed satisfied with our answers. We left the boardroom feeling pretty good.

Shortly after we had finished, a few of the investors came out to speak with us and ask more questions, and a couple even invited us to join them for dinner after the event. The event ran from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM, which makes for a rather late dinner, but it’s not like we had other plans, so we happily accepted. Later on, once all the companies had made their pitches, the announcement was made for the winning pitch. Astoundingly, we were it! Out of a possible 480 points, the judges awarded us 460, giving us the top spot by a comfortable margin. Well, that was pretty cool. A couple of engineers out-businessing a bunch of business people at business – that’s the business! Following that, Dan and I were inundated by members of the judge panel who wanted to speak with us. It was like we were the pretty girl at the dance. Having attended a number of start-up networking events, I can tell you that this is usually the opposite of how things go. Normally, there are dozens of founders vying for the attention of just a few investors, so this was a welcome role reversal.

Once the excitement died down, we headed off to meet some new friends at Chairman’s Steakhouse. I’m going to go ahead and say that’s probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. The menus had backlighting! You open them up, and there’s no need to squint to make out the words in the dim ambient lighting. Magical. Also, the food was exceptional. We ate and drank until 1:00 AM, then took an Uber home.

The following morning, I had to wake up at 5:30 AM so I could Uber back to the restaurant to pick up my vehicle, and then drive across town to make it to the 8:00 AM start of the ScaleUp Week “Masterclasses” seminar, which my friends at VMSA had given me a ticket to. It’s worth mentioning that in the three or so hours I had to sleep at home, my three-year-old daughter woke up at least three times. Oof. Regardless, it was a great event and I am glad I went, but holy heck was I tired. Here’s me when I arrived, looking totally ready to take on the day.

This is neither here nor there, but a couple of days later the Dixons, our business advisers who you may recall from my previous blog post are on a multi-month trek across the Great Himalaya Trail, sent me the following picture of a yak, which they said reminded them of me. Maybe it’s the rope around the head. Maybe it’s a lack of oxygen due to extreme altitude. Regardless of the reason, I appreciate that there are people whom I greatly respect on the other side of the planet that are hallucinating my likeness in fluffy bovines. It’s not the business advice I need, but it’s the business advice I deserve ;P

I think that more-or-less catches us up to today. I suppose I should say more things about work. We’ve gone through a pretty significant floor plan update and rearrangement of our existing space. We’re definitely starting to come up against the limits of what we can do within our currently allotted area. That said, everyone now has a sit-stand desk, and we’re making it work for the time being! Here’s a few shots of us around the office over the last week.

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that the collective fleet of PhyzBatch-9000s has now sorted over 411 million cards. That’s 30 million more since my last blog post just 40 days ago. At this rate, using the power of math, we’re on track to hit half a billion cards in about 119 days (almost exactly three months). Given that we are constantly putting more machines out into the world, this rate of card sorting is only going to increase, so we will likely reach 1,000 tons of cards sorted around the end of August or the beginning of September. That’s one hell of a milestone! I mean, when was the last time you sorted through 1,000 tons of something?

Man, this turned out to be a long one. I may take a bit of a break from blog posting so I can focus on business development. I’ll see if I can cajole other members of our team into writing something.

As always, thank you for your time and your support. We here at TCG Machines will continue doing our best to develop and deliver useful technology for the trading card community 😊