Miss Courtney and her assistant, Cole

We have less than a week to go for nominations to the Cringely (Not in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour.  Mrs. Cringely (Mary Alyce) and Miss Courtney are contacting all 400 companies so we can distribute our festive company questionnaire to the right person. This is a harder task than we had guessed.

We need this questionnaire for two purposes: 1) it gives us standardized data with which to most fairly select the final 24 companies, and; 2) companies that don’t bother to return the questionnaire will be eliminated from the competition, saving us some work.

The questionnaire goes to the CEO or CFO or whomever in the company is supposed to be providing adult supervision.

What we are discovering, however, is that:

1)  Many nominated startups don’t have a designated CEO or CFO;

2)  Many nominated startups that did have a CEO or CFO lost him/her last week;

3)  Many nominated startups don’t have a phone number;

4)  Many nominated startups are no longer in business;

5)  Many nominated startups are actually based in Edmonton, AB, Canada (and only in Edmonton — not anywhere else in Canada — it’s weird) ;

6)  Many nominated startups didn’t know they were nominated — until we told them;

7)  Many startups think we want money from them (we don’t).

So here is what I want you to do. If your company has been nominated or if you nominated a company for the Startup Tour, quick-like-a-bunny go find the name and e-mail address of the person who purports to provide adult supervision for that company. Send that name and e-mail address to Mary Alyce Cringely (ma@cringely.com) or to Miss Courtney (courtney@cringely.com).

If you have received an e-mail or call from Mary Alyce or Miss Courtney, please get back to them promptly because they are the real deal.  If they call you tomorrow please take the call because it could be important to your company’s success.

If anyone calls or writes to your startup claiming to be Mary Alyce, Miss Courtney, or me and they ask for money, tell them to go to Hell. We won’t ask for money. Heck, when we arrive we’ll bring muffins.

That’s how you will know us, by our muffins.

We really need these questionnaires if this process is going to work, so please contact Mary Alyce or Miss Courtney if they haven’t already contacted you.

And if you are single, handsome but maybe a little scruffy, no older than 30, and very very smart, be sure to tell Miss Courtney that, too, because we are trying to find her true love.

The ball is in your court.