Digital polling company also bags its 100,000,000th poll response in just over 13 months
CivicScience Inc. today announced a landmark milestone, claiming to have set a new world record for being snubbed by venture capital funds. Within days of the record-setting ‘Heisman’ from some bottom-tier Cincinnati-based fund, the company also indexed the 100 millionth poll response collected by its intelligent polling software.
Although the Guinness Book of World Records has no entries to prove it, CivicScience is also believed to have shattered previous records for condescending pats on the back, eye-rolls, and for hearing VCs say, ‘You know I’d love to do this deal but my partners just don’t get it.’ The company threw a raging party at a local dive bar to commemorate the achievement.
“I think we owe it all to 24-point font we used in our 26-slide investor deck,” said CivicScience CEO John Dick as he threw back his third shot of Jäger, but who’s counting. “Thanks a lot Guy Kawasaki.”
The record-setting event overshadowed CivicScience’s rapidly-growing pipeline of digital polling data, which exceeded 100 million responses from over 4.5 million unique users in the past 13 months. The company is now able to track consumer sentiment toward over 1,200 brands and topics on a daily basis. In June alone, CivicScience added 16 of the top 100 newspapers and the largest Hispanic site in the US to its network of polling application partners. But, none of this holds a candle to the new record.
“It’s no wonder really,” said one 26-year-old newly-minted-MBA-turned venture capital sage. “Nobody has ever been able to make real money from silly online polls. Besides, who wants to go to a December board meeting in Pittsburgh anyway?”
CivicScience estimates that it tried no fewer than fifteen Powerpoint templates during their epic run to glory. Slides calling CivicScience “the Google of Digital Polling” and “the Next Big IPO” proved particularly offensive. During a real low-point, the company even tried dropping names of fellow Pittsburghers Mark Cuban, Groupon’s Andrew Mason, and Quora’s Charlie Cheever, though none of them have even heard of the polling start-up.
“This is a real testament to John’s dedication and pride-swallowing abilities,” said CivicScience CTO Will Oberman, before smoothly shot-gunning a 16-ounce can of PBR. “Most CEOs would have given up when we closed our strategic investor round in March. But when VCs kept calling, John really wanted the record.”
Most recently, the CivicScience user base was buoyed by the company’s expansion into China, where they are polling China’s massive middle-class youth population over Internet café terminals on the Mainland. New staff in Beijing is working to deploy the CivicScience iQpoll technology over Chinese web portals and social networks. With even more venture funds now in China, CivicScience could put the VC-rejection record completely out of reach.
When asked exactly how many funds refused to invest in the company, Mr. Dick took a quick break from slurping Grey Goose out of a six-foot ice-luge and said, “Well, all of them I guess. It’s like DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak. Nobody will ever touch it.”