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Penultimate Milwaukee


Immediately after arriving in Chicago on a red-eye, I was faced with a daunting (for me) 2-hour drive to Milwaukee with little sleep. Normally, I refrain from drinking coffee because I want to avoid dependence on the beverage and my sleep schedule is good enough that I don’t need it. However, on 4 hours of rest, I needed something to tide me over. So, I broke the drive into two parts – one to a Starbucks midway between Chicago and Milwaukee and then from there to our Airbnb. I went in and bought a Frappuccino, but not cream-based as I normally do. I could feel the coffee taste, which I was not fond of, so I assumed the drink would give me a caffeine boost. Later, as multiple friends informed me, I realized that a Frappuccino is pure sugar, and barely has any caffeine. But I guess the placebo effect worked, since it kept me awake till Milwaukee.

Felipe and I returned to the Midwest separately after returning to our respective homes for the July 4th break. We didn’t have any meetings on the Monday, so we were able to rest up and get ready for the three big meetings over the next few days.

In our meeting with one of the top private companies in the US, a major construction supply company, the originally scheduled 30-minute meeting stretched out to 2.5 hours. The CEO himself took two hours out of his schedule to explain the company’s philosophy and take us on a tour of the headquarters and facilities. We were really amazed by this experience because in our experiences thus far, never had an executive spent so much time answering our questions about their business. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to form a partnership with the company, but the care that they showed definitely left an imprint on us.

Milwaukee was not as successful as we would’ve liked, but we were excited to finally get to Chicago to spend the rest (and bulk) of our summer. After hitting 10 cities in 5 weeks, we were ready to settle down in one spot and spend more than 4 days in the same apartment. I was, in particular, excited by the prospect of no more driving!

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