I still have The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal from September 12, 2001 to remind me. Yellowed, they offer a very different viewpoint then the retrospectives of today...which are filled with politicized hindsight.
I remember the day vividly. It started with a lot of excitement for me. My company was about to sign a term sheet for a round of badly needed funding from a Swedish VC, our product had just experienced a month of explosive growth fueled by a vigorous embrace by the Manhattan legal community.
Life was good.
Then one of the programmers said, "a plane hit the Towers." I thought it was a small private plane, ala Corey Lidle years later. The VCs arrived and another programmer said a second plane hit. We turned on our TV and spent the rest of the day in a daze. When the third plane hit the Pentagon, THAT hit everyone real hard. Three planes meant a sophisticated enemy looking to do us massive harm.
One of our sales team was down in Atlanta and her husband worked for us also. He jumped in his car and drove down to get her. I knew two close friends on their way to the Towers for meetings. Timing saved their lives. For far too many others, the timing was tragic.
A few months ago I tripped over a plastic container in our basement. Within it was cereal; duct tape; batteries (now dead); bottled water and other stuff. I remember explaining to my then-7 year old that we may have to use these. I chuckled at the memory, but put it back. You never know.
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