How the heck does anyone meet for coffee at 3pm on a Wednesday? I love OCC, but it would help if these events were 8am/lunch/evening to at least give those with real jobs a chance to make them.
They're great at looking smart, but anyone that has taken stats 101 can see right through their surveys. Attended a conference once where people just drilled the so-called expert of all the flaws in the data-collection methodology. Felt kinda bad for the person.
Not much else to add except I would recommend picking up two books as well.
1. A standard price theory text that will give you the basic tools of economists.
2. A book that provides real-world applications illustrating how these tools are used. (I agree - Basic Economics by Sowell is a great place to start.)
The no sleep is tough for me. Historically, I've required about eight solid hours. Lately, I've found that with a morning exercise routine I can cut about two hours out of my night's sleep and still function fine. Anything less than six hours and I start to require a power nap during the day.
Often the usual response is something similar to "we are anxious to go through a formal valuation process should we determine this is an appropriate possible investment." It's certainly a bit of a chicken answer, but you can provide numbers such as revenue, product developments, and users to give an idea of what a proper valuation would be. The idea is to not price yourself out of their range during the first conversation.