Brushes With Presidents

[Steve of phpBB]

Our billy22 makes the big time - can't do a link from my phone, but search YouTube for "Obama Demo Day" and jump to 6:35:

[howard]

Finally he says something I can wholly and enthusiastically support.

"It's good to see ya, Billy!"

[rass]

Can't find him in the video, but he's mentioned in write ups all over the place. Congrats billy.

[Sabo]

Here's the video.

[A_B]

I don't care who you are, that's pretty awesome.

[Ryan]

Jesus, that's awesome.

[BSF21]

Quick! To the Billy22g appreciation thread!

Seriously Billy if you see this, that's just awesome. Congrats!

[DSafetyGuy]

Yeah, that's better than when I got the "eye contact/head nod" from Carter. Or the next day, when I shook Biden's hand (he was about 4 1/2 months from being sworn in).

[wlu_lax6]

Very impressive. Mr. Water Ski.

[The Sybian]

Holy fuck, great job presenting. He didn't seem nervous at all. I love that Obama actually spends some time asking questions and seems to have genuine curiosity as to how the app works. Proud of you, Billy, wherever you are.

[cerrano]

Guess his past association with the Swamp passed muster with the secret service.

Damn, I thought we were edgier.

Awesome stuff, waterski.

[Shirley]

That was awesome. I've done a lot of product demos for my company, but nothing quite like that. Very smooth. And damn, Obama is good at his role as well.

[Johnnie]

Super fucking cool. I completely forgot I've had his app on my phone since he posted about it in the Swamp way back when.

Let me tell you, this is exactly the type of app every single military member needs. When you go base to base and are scatterbrained with moving, family stuff, appointments, inprocessing and all the nonsense of transferring, going to one app to get all your contacts is a godsend.

Ramstein has the "Find It Guide" that is printed every year that is basically a mini phone book. I believe they also have an app. So whenever you need a phone number our address anywhere, you can look it up. But not all bases are as robust as here. His app can address all of them. If marketed right, this can blow up huge. And showing the president is a good start.

[govmentchedda]

Fuck yeah, Billy! Damn that's awesome.

[brian]

It was kind of funny that Obama joked about the Defense Department basically "stealing" the idea and doing the app themselves. That would probably be one of my concerns if I were him.

[A_B]

It was kind of funny that Obama joked about the Defense Department basically "stealing" the idea and doing the app themselves. That would probably be one of my concerns if I were him.

It's pretty weird that they don't already have a good app for this. But hey, buy Billy out!

[billy22g]

Hey everyone! Thanks so much for the congrats. It was a pretty surreal experience. Neither of us knew going in that we would be meeting the President, but just that we were invited to demo Base Directory and possibly to "Senior Administration Officials." Also crazy because we're still quite small in terms of users, employees, and funding (bootstrapped), and products like Duolingo were there. President Obama was incredibly generous with his time, and in the way he conversed with each company, making the questions easier to answer and such. If you had told me two weeks ago I would get to demo something I've spent years building and improving, I wouldn't have believed you. Several of the other founders we got to meet were just incredible people, and I'm blown away to have been invited to the White House with them. Thanks for all of your support and congrats!

And Johnnie (and anyone else with insight into this stuff), I'd love your feedback and constructive criticism on how we can continue to improve utility. OCONUS bases are certainly not where we'd like them to be in terms of comprehensiveness, and CONUS ones are varied in level of coverage we have but getting significantly better, especially for the most widely used ones. Thanks for the validation that it's serving a real need, if imperfectly at present. That's the feedback we continue to get, and it's always nice to hear.

[Gunpowder]

Nice, Bills!

You're a socialist now but nice!

[howard]

I don't care who you are, that's pretty awesome.

I don't care who the president is, or how much I despise him, that's pretty awesome.

I thought Billy's body language while he was waiting his turn showed a lot of nervousness, but once he was on stage, fucking flawless!

[wlu_lax6]

Billy,
I took a look at Base Directory.. A few pieces of feedback

1.) I was curious if this would be helpful for my sister and her family. My brother is in the Department of State courier service. I did not feel like Base Directory targeted them when they have similar challenges as military base (in fact they probably overlap some of the bases). The big difference is Department of State probably has an "older" audience and more family issues. Which makes this service even more valuable.
2.) Not sure it is core to your service offering, but my organization spends a fair bit of money military financial education. In fact we have a Military Spouse Fellowship program. Unclear if their is a meaningful overlap, but could get your brain started on an opportunity (http://www.saveandinvest.org/MilitaryCenter/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).

Look forward to seeing you on Shark Tank this year.

[wlu_lax6]

I don't care who you are, that's pretty awesome.

I don't care who the president is, or how much I despise him, that's pretty awesome.

I thought Billy's body language while he was waiting his turn showed a lot of nervousness, but once he was on stage, fucking flawless!

I always find that it sounds funny when someone says they are "separated" from the military service. Makes me think they were asked to go. I know it is the common term, but just makes me think it was not on good terms

[Ryan]

Needs more Hulk Hogan avatar.

[The Sybian]

I always find that it sounds funny when someone says they are "separated" from the military service. Makes me think they were asked to go. I know it is the common term, but just makes me think it was not on good terms

It's better than the HR parlance (at least used in my company), "terminated." Even resigning is "voluntary termination."