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Agenda:
- Executive Stand up!
Takeaways:
- Reach out to Lifetime about a movie deal related to the Product Manager / Developer GDPR Love Story
- Create a fake Twitter account for an African dictator and use it to convince John to stop illegal logging and perhaps start a revolution
- Create new landing page to take money and data from couch buyers in new markets… it’s a growth strategy
As always, follow us on Twitter @StartupRecorded!
welcome to this startup is being recorded. This recording is improvised fiction. Similarities between it and the real world are entirely intentional. Now enjoy the recording. Calathea is played by Robyn Stegman. Robyn is a digital campaign manager for ocean Conservancy and is a comedian mostly found at Highwire improv. You can find her on all the social medias. And she does mean all at rsteggy thank you for listening.
Kate:All right. Uh, Hey everybody, I'm happy Wednesday. Let's get this going just to another standup. It's obviously been, um, an interesting week since the all hands and you know, some of the company's shifts, but I, I think we're doing all right. Um, oh, let's do intros
Matt:want it quick. Uh, it's not just another standup I've got, I've got good dudes. Uh, great news.
Eric:oh, okay. All right.
Matt:have a little bit. Let's see. Yeah, you're right. Introductions.
Kate:yeah. Uh, you want to go first
Matt:Oh, sure. Um, my name is Matt, matt.yachts. Uh, that's my website where you can find out more about me and I'm the CTO here at.
Calathea:I am I am the chief creatives are here at six.
Eric:Carter, chief product officer here.
Kate:and Kate uh, chief of staff here is. Um, okay, well, I don't want to wait.
Matt:quick toast.
Eric:oh, wow.
Matt:yeah, sorry. I, uh, I just came from toasting, so I've, I've got a beer. I don't know if anybody else. Um,
Kate:Got some tea.
Matt:oh, I forgot to say what, uh, right. Well, uh, Eric, you, you know, and congrats to both of us. So, uh, as you all know, we've still been hashing out GDPR, uh, issues and what we're going to do about them. Uh, Laura's on my team has been particularly, uh, insistent that we go deep and we do everything we can, uh, yeah. David, uh, from Eric's team has, uh, been a little bit more pragmatic and I appreciate his patience, but, uh, and, uh, just to be clear, we haven't solved any of that. We're, they're still hashing that out, but what they have done is put a ring on it. Uh, so congratulations to Lars and David. Yeah.
Kate:they're engaged.
Matt:Yeah, Lars, Lars from dev and David from product, uh, they haven't set a date. Like it's still very tenuous, uh, in that sense, but, uh, they've told their families like it's it's happening. Um,
Calathea:That was so quick.
Kate:They hate each other, like two months
Matt:I they've been spending a lot of time together. So like, when you say quick, I mean, they've really. Got the sense of each other at
Eric:Yeah. The calendar time was short, but. Relationship time.
Calathea:that
Matt:just want to raise a glass
Calathea:Yes. Oh my God. I mean, I love enemies to lovers romance stories. They are honestly just the best and I'm so happy for them.
Matt:it really feels storybook. Like, uh, you know, just like, oh, what a whirlwind? Um, I, oh, I wanted to add. They have, they have collectively used our, uh, our legal time for the month. Um, just getting all the pre-nup stuff done and, uh, you know, working. Yeah.
Kate:we can't use our lawyers for personal reasons.
Matt:told them that, but it was already, it's kind of like, uh, you know, ask forgiveness, not permission thing. So like it's, they won't do it again. Uh, we've told. Uh, in no uncertain terms, uh, if, if there is like a divorce on the way or something that, that this is not for that. Um, but it's done. So,
Eric:It was very clever actually, because, you know, D David is a German citizen. So he was able to kind of put it under the guise of GDPR. Um,
Kate:Oh,
Eric:it was, it was, I, you know, I was mad, but I kind of just respect,
Matt:that's very clever. The two of them are very
Eric:There are good team.
Calathea:Well,
Kate:looking at.
Calathea:I wish them the best and maybe if they want to make it up for us, um, you know, we have ever since, um, the TV spot that shall not be named, been really thinking about how we can partner on some like TV programming, um, some like branded content and. Honestly, I think I could definitely sell that love story to lifetime or, you know, one of those networks. So, you know, if they wanted to make it up, maybe if they just gave us their story rights for their love story, I think we could like really have a really good, some good CIT content, you know?
Matt:Califia that's so good. Yeah. I'll uh, I'll talk to Lars. Um, but I've, I feel like how is there, how is that going to be a no.
Calathea:Yeah. I mean, I would only want to honor their story, you know, and it, and it happened right here and, you know, there's so much couch content. You can put into a love story. I mean, from engagement to the first time you, you know, meet each other
Matt:Yeah, I just, I'm thinking of titles, like in, in the marketplace for love, uh, start startup my heart, like yeah.
Calathea:Yeah. I really liked that. And we could probably like use that in our ads if it does really well, you know, a cute little
Matt:oh, and I mean, promotional consideration provided by obviously our couches will be in the production.
Calathea:right. A hundred percent. So yeah, I mean, I would, I would love to make that store.
Kate:you know, what's interesting is like it in the invoice from the lawyer, which I should have looked at, but didn't until just now, I mean, he lists off multiple things. Done, I think to help build this for work hours. They've said that they're using all of our couches and their ceremony. Um, they actually planned to get married in the lobby. Um, they, I didn't
Matt:Yeah, that's part of why
Kate:right. A romantic
Matt:there's no date yet? Um, like, I don't know, obviously a lot of that stuff has to get run by UK. Um
Kate:right. And our office manager,
Matt:yeah, so I, uh, I told them that's a, maybe on all that, obviously they've cleared it with legal, but, yeah, there's, there's still open questions.
Calathea:I mean, if they are, if they want to have it here, I mean, we could even turn the wedding into a beautiful experience, you know, like tape it, like have, if they're willing to wait for a little bit, maybe they can get married after the lifetime special, after we've like really built up their story. It could be alive of then, you know,
Matt:be, uh, like the last thing filmed for the life to, you know, they always do one of those like cut twos. So after, after the love story, uh, the, the climax. Um, you know, whatever, uh, then we cut two months later and we see, you know, the real them. Cause I doubt they would want to, you think they would want to play themselves in a lifetime?
Calathea:I don't think they have to play themselves. I think that it, you know, usually at the end of those things, they like cut to the real people or show who they really are. I think we could do that. Or again, after it comes out and we drum up support, we just have another live special where we have their marriage. We have them talk about it, get questions from the audience.
Kate:So
Calathea:We could even like raffle off, you know, an opportunity to be a wedding guest.
Kate:Wait. I also just realized. If they get married, David will become a citizen, which means his visa slot opens up trees or get higher, finally bring on another international higher
Eric:wow.
Kate:wow.
Eric:as a huge impact.
Calathea:oh, well, this is very exciting in many ways.
Matt:Yeah. Hey, uh, congrats Larson, David, and, uh, cheers to us. All of us. Cause uh, yeah, big news. Good
Kate:if any, other of our four. For an employees are looking to get hitched to an American citizen. Let's work on that. Let's make that a goal.
Matt:Wow.
Kate:Yeah. Okay. Great update. who has to go next? My mine is not so good. I don't know if we want to ease into it.
Matt:okay. I would rather hear it. Uh, now, otherwise I'm gonna do.
Eric:Yeah, I'm
Calathea:would agree. My mind is already going to a dark place. It naturally veers there.
Kate:sure. Sure. So, you know, I mentioned last week, um, how we're chopping down forests in Iowa that used to be, you know, national territory and,
Calathea:yeah. Yeah. I thought we were very clear about our horse binder policy of this, that like, we know that this is something John really wants, but certain members of our office would rather not think about it.
Kate:Yeah, that's true. Um, I just, I guess I'm just bringing it up to you all, because we discovered that we had misinterpreted a few of the, uh, employee safety laws in Iowa. Um, and so we owe those employees like a lot of hazard pay, like a lot, uh, and. We also, weren't supposed to just like buy tools from home Depot to cut down trees. Apparently there's like pretty specific tools. Like the lumber industry uses to chop down trees,
Eric:Um,
Kate:which we didn't have. Um,
Matt:like regulatory capture. If I've ever heard.
Kate:fair. Um, I mean, I will admit, I don't think our contractors chose like the best tools. They went for a pretty like rudimentary. What's been approach.
Matt:if you're going to home Depot with a budget mindset, you're going to walk away with some flimsy.
Calathea:Yeah.
Kate:Um, which may have worked out in our favor because we didn't actually chop down very many trees, um, and apparently hazard pay us per tree. So we don't owe that much. Uh, but we are definitely on the state government's radar. Yeah. And
Calathea:are we closing down that program? Cause that seems like a win for us, honestly. I mean,
Matt:Good news kind of
Calathea:we've proven to John that this is just not logistically in the right vein for us. We don't have to cut down old growth trees anymore.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah, no, I think John has definitely got the message that Iowa is not the right place to do this.
Calathea:Oh, I, that was not the message. I was
Matt:yeah, no, I definitely heard him say there are 49 states. And that's before you get into territory's. Oh boy.
Kate:yeah. See, that's the thing he's actually, he wants us to go international.
Calathea:No. Oh no. Oh, come on.
Kate:yeah. He said that there are, there are some countries that the way he put it. Their democracy is a sham, which makes it
Calathea:Yeah.
Matt:come on
Kate:I don't know how he gets connected with like dictators of small countries, but he does.
Matt:because he parties.
Calathea:Yeah. I mean,
Matt:John loves to party and he loves to flaunt it. And they like, it's just really impressive. Dictators want to be, you know, catered to, and he makes them feel special.
Calathea:Yeah. And he just has a beautiful yacht. I mean, it's just, it's, it's truly, truly fantastic, you know?
Kate:yeah, we were chopping down some trees and, um, in Africa.
Matt:Oh, he didn't say it like that. Diddy.
Calathea:Yeah.
Matt:in Africa?
Calathea:Yeah,
Matt:Africa's a whole continent.
Kate:it's true. Let me, let me look it up. He gave me, um, he gave me like a kind of series of information that could probably figure out which one, uh, oh dear.
Eric:the more we, the more we look at this, the worse it gets.
Kate:I know. I feel like I shouldn't even be Googling.
Calathea:This feels really bad.
Kate:Oh, symbolic Bob way. No.
Calathea:There's so many issues with this. I just, at some point I feel like we need to have a conversation with John that like these kind of, we're just too small of a company to have practices like this. You know, it's very difficult for a company this small to hide the amount of. Honestly, a endangered species killing, you know, uh, activities that we are taking part of now.
Matt:of couches here, but like there, there's not a lot of rug for us to sweep stuff under,
Eric:right.
Calathea:Yeah. I'm
Matt:Kate, to the extent that you have to sign the checks for this. Could we just not, could we just not with the logging in unknown African country?
Kate:sure. Yeah. I mean, it's really, we can't use checks because of some of the, um, practices the us has, was sending money to these countries. So he
Matt:Oh, so they're on, they're on lists. They're on, on lists of countries that we're not allowed to do business with.
Calathea:So you were saying we're also going against American Che sanctions.
Matt:great. Good.
Kate:he just Matt, he said, if you could look into some of the crypto currencies that you think are most stable to send over,
Matt:Um, listen,
Kate:the idea of creating our own crypto, but I said, that's probably not.
Eric:Not for at least four more years.
Matt:thank you for saying that. I, yeah. Oh, I didn't think today would be the day that I would finally hear that I've, I've been waiting for that shoe to drop. Uh, let's hope that, that he doesn't think of that again for a while. I mean, the, the answer, uh, I don't know. I'll, I'll draft an email, but like Kate, the answer is going to be no, like I'm going to put the brakes on this as hard as I can. We can't go against state department mandates, uh, and, and launder money through any coin, uh, and, and log in contested countries to get conflict.
Calathea:Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think, you know, we've crossed this slide many of times, and again, like we just don't have the brand, you know, credibility at this moment to deal with a hit as serious as that.
Kate:Yeah. Okay. Well the last request,
Matt:Oh, sorry.
Kate:I just need to pass on what he said. You know, I feel like it's my duty. Um, He did say Califia that? Um, one of these dictators social media accounts has been deactivated, so he was hoping you could maybe help him find a workaround, um, so that he could get back on Twitter.
Calathea:absolutely not. Um, one we've gone over this. Um, I'm not becoming best friends with Jack Dorsey. Um, He doesn't even run Twitter anymore. That's not how you get your account reactivated. If he could like stop setting up meetings between me and Jack Dorsey would be really great. Um, I don't, I don't have the power over Twitter to do any of those regulatory things, you know? Um, I know that I got a blue check really early, but like that's a totally different ask than asking. Um, to have a dictator, his account reinstated, and maybe that dictator should just look within himself and see if, and think about whether or not Twitter's the right market, you know, for him. Um, Because I would say, you know, if you're going to work against democracy and undermine your own people and solder them by the millions that maybe a public place like Twitter is not the place for him, but, you know, there's, there's a lot of back channel, social media platforms where people like that, um, find it very effective to, you know, rally a public that supports. Uh, Monster's a harsh word, but I think, you know where we're going here.
Eric:counterpoint? Califia um, I agree with everything you've said, however, John doesn't know, you don't have that. Can, can we just create a Twitter account that appears to be said, dictators account DM, DM John, say supply chain issues. The deal is off. And then just delete the account.
Calathea:I like this. I like this idea a lot. Yeah. I think this is really great.
Matt:that sounds.
Kate:Yeah. I mean, that's
Eric:special. He'll feel like he got like a, like a brief interaction over Twitter, but really, no, it's just, just.
Calathea:Eric. I think this is really, this is super smart. Um, and honestly, you know, I know that he doesn't really communicate much with this sad dictator. So if we can,
Matt:promises at parties, which he holds like once every few years. So it's not, it's not like he's got a direct message. Thread will certainly not on Twitter. It's not like he's got a text message thread going or anything.
Eric:sure. I'm sure he does.
Matt:Yeah.
Calathea:I think with a Twitter account and, um, some deep fake zoom calls, we can honestly take over the identity in John's mind of this dictator. And it might actually get us a pretty good in for issues like this.
Matt:know, and
Kate:Yeah.
Matt:not necessarily just in John's mind, right? I mean, this is a public account on Twitter. Maybe there's some good to be done here. I don't, I don't want to speculate too deeply, but you know, publicly undermining a, uh, a brutal dictatorship could be.
Kate:You know, we have a lot of videos from the we watch week,
Eric:oh, that's right.
Kate:really see who it is. We could probably edit those up a little bit and boom.
Matt:um, this is a big challenge for your team. Califia what do you think?
Calathea:I mean, I've trained my entire life to do work like this, you know, I never thought I'd get back into doing this kind of deep PSYOPs and influencing elections this match. But yeah, I mean, I I'd be willing to take on a little side project, you know, just for fun, just to inspire the old days. That would be fun.
Eric:Yeah, we've got a couple of people who worked at some video startups before coming here. So I'm happy to lend you people for halftime if needed.
Calathea:Oh, that would be, that would be really great. Yeah. And I'm sure I can find some, you know, groups down on the ground who can really be our nice little, like a street crew and really help, you know, ferment a dissatisfaction with the dictator and.
Matt:And get with me and I'll, uh, I'll make sure we've got some secure VPN set up, uh, with those folks
Calathea:Yeah.
Matt:that they, they have clean internet in and out. And then we've got local IPS, uh, for when we finally need to do posts.
Kate:Let's just start over scope this. I think we could probably time box taking down a dictator to like two weeks, three
Calathea:I, it will be really small. I mean, for me, I'll just put in some extra time outside of, you know, work on this, you know, it's been a while since I was part of a coup and it's kind of cool to see if that old playbook works and you know how to up.
Eric:And if it, if it goes well, we can invest a greater proportion of our time after series a,
Calathea:Yeah, yeah, of course this is, I think this is way down the line in terms of like what we want to do again, we're so small of an organization that the need to topple governments is something that we won't need to do for, you know, at least another five years.
Matt:for any businessperson.
Calathea:Right? Yeah.
Kate:okay. Well, I've taken up so much time. I feel like I've stand up. Kathy or Eric, do you want to go next?
Eric:well, we're on the topic of series a, um, you know, as, as we've been tracking our monthly active user metrics, we're getting pretty close to the threshold. We need to, to check that one off. Um, so, um, I, I did have some of the UX designers and the product teams redirect focus for a few weeks because. Roger, um, you know, you know, the investor's kid, um, he sent several support emails saying that he was not happy with the new color scheme after we rebranded a set. He didn't like that there was any meta blue in the, you know,
Kate:um,
Eric:in the interface, you know, gen alpha. He's very, very passionate about these things. I respect it. So we did have the team design, a full white label, uh, using green and gold. Elementary school colors. Um, we've released it to him, uh, and he's, he's actually been sending those, those links around and it's been a 6% bump in monthly active users over the last three days. So, um,
Matt:Wow.
Eric:really surprising, but we, we may want to, to talk to the rest of the kids and do this for everybody, for every investor's kid.
Matt:Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah, no, I wondered what was going on with you when y'all started putting together Rogers build. Uh,
Eric:Yeah,
Matt:really cool. Uh, everything about the app is the same, right? It's just the color scheme that.
Eric:w w we default to the child size couches, but other than that, it's the.
Matt:Great. Yeah. Yeah. Loving me.
Kate:sounds good. I guess of Califia writes off on the color scheme, green and gold.
Calathea:Yeah. I mean, it's not necessarily what I would have chosen, but, um, I think we can work it into our color palette, existing color palette, and just make it seem like in the universe, but not our main colors.
Eric:Yeah, I think this is going to have to be something we have to tackle at earlier than I expected, but as we grow, you know, customer requests and white labels and, you know, onsite and on on-prem deployments may, may become a thing. Um, so, you know, it's, it's, it's complexity.
Matt:I mean, we're so close. Like that closed series a is it's a F it's a flavor on my tongue.
Eric:It's right there.
Matt:Uh, I almost feel.
Eric:snowball.
Matt:I, uh, I do have, uh, uh, an update on our metrics and, um, Facebook finally, finally is sending us their couch, marketplace traffic. So all, all posts on Facebook marketplace. Uh, yeah, I mean, we, we handshake that deal. It feels like years ago now. And we put, we put ink on paper. It feels like months ago now. And finally they flipped the switch. So any marketplace posts that has to do with. Comes to us, it's ours. Um, the only major issue is they didn't put any geo-fencing on it. So like we serve, we serve our markets, uh, and the, the rest of these posts are currently going into essentially, you know, uh, a garbage can, um, there's, you know, folks in any place we don't serve. Uh, we got nothing for them. So.
Kate:only serve like five cities in the U S.
Matt:no, you see the problem gate. So, um, yeah, I don't, I don't know. That's that's, uh, honestly, that's Facebook's problem. Um, our, our agreement said, uh, you know, for our markets,
Kate:Did it, or did John change that?
Matt:good question. I remember discussing that our agreement should limit traffic to only the cities where we have markets, uh, Believed that Facebook would go for that because it allows them to essentially keep most of the world, uh, while we only get our few cities. Um, I should revisit that. Well, do we have any ideas for this? Like I'm, I'm happy to just let these keep hitting the trashcan.
Calathea:I mean, honestly, I do think that if there, you know, we're getting that traffic, we should at least like put together a really quick splash page. That's something like coming soon to you or something that gets them to give us all of their information for when we do expand into new areas, you know?
Matt:the market research that you know, is very expensive to do. And right now we've got it for free.
Calathea:Right. And then we could just basically like throw them back to the old Facebook marketplace, but basically make them go through a portal where they have to give us information in order to go back. Yeah.
Kate:Yeah. Maybe in that flow, we could also ask them to help donate to bugs. Be again, see if we can get
Eric:oh.
Kate:some free.
Calathea:Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think maybe we, we should really think about how we create this like really fun splash page. It's a little bit like interactive gets people involved, gets them to get us information, maybe a little bit of money and then shoots him back out where they were.
Matt:I love it. All right. So we're building a new funnel. Uh, basically just to get a little bit information, a little bit of cash, get people hooked.
Calathea:I mean, it would look like we have incredible growth into a bunch of new markets when really we're just, you know, basically replicating one small part of the system. And we could also, I mean, really brand our couches that we send out as a premium experience and maybe have banners for people to sign up, to be alerted. Perhaps give us a little bit of money to be the first, to know when that premium service comes to them.
Matt:Has anybody ever crowdfunded a franchise?
Calathea:Oh,
Eric:That's compelling.
Calathea:know, but that is a really interesting,
Matt:Like, like citizens of Phoenix, you love moving couches, but you want them to not be so used. So, you know, give us a thousand bucks and that'll go towards opening a real office here.
Eric:we could
Calathea:could really bring bugs, be in and have like bring bugs, be to your town, you know?
Kate:Uh, Citizens?
Eric:United now.
Kate:No, I don't. Yeah. I don't think citizens United, but I will say that was one of our ideas for like our, uh, our company soccer team, you know, citizens United, um, still don't know if it should go with it, but anyway,
Matt:We'll need, we still need five more.
Kate:That's true. We have eight need five. Um,
Matt:it's just, I mean, that's a minimum. Like we, you know, that's not, that's a tiring game. We need a deeper.
Kate:yeah, yeah. Uh, anyway, um, Califia I think you're the only one who hasn't gone. So do you have, uh, any updates for.
Calathea:Yeah, I just have a really, uh, small kind of update is our team is realizing that with more and more people using things like Siri and Google play and, or, you know, whatever the Google name does or Alexa and those kinds of things that we really need to.
Matt:Google.
Calathea:I think this is just Google. They really need to get creative on that.
Matt:You can say like Siri, Alexa, these, it sounded like individuals. And for Google, you say, okay, Google.
Calathea:Even Microsoft has Cortana, you know, like really good names, but, but Google, uh, it's just it's um, yeah, it's distasteful. Um, but anyway, as we are more people accessing the internet through the voice, we're thinking about how to build a voice component out to our. You know, website, and obviously this is something that we'd be working with product on, but before we really go down that capability, we just want to see what kind of look I will not look but sound and field we really want for what sits sounds like. So right now we're kind of going through a lot of different voice actors, uh, to really try to hammer down what the real brand is for CIT. You guys probably would have probably noticed that we have Zach Braff in the office, um,
Matt:that was him.
Calathea:Yeah, that was him. Um, he was very, he was very lovely to just sit down and try a bunch of different voices, um, with us. Um, we are considering him as the voice of CIT, uh, and we really just wanted to see what kind of range he would offer us.
Matt:How did it go? Like, yeah.
Calathea:It wouldn't well, you know, I'm, I'm not sure we're a hundred percent ready to pull the trigger on him, you know? Yeah. There's, you know, we really wanted him to have a bigger range. So if we wanted, you know, something a little different down the road, it would be, you know, he would be able to grow with us and we just didn't feel like he, you know, he gives us sack BRAF, but is he really gonna give us whatever that 2.0 experiences? And, and maybe it's not even a human voice, uh, maybe it is. Yeah. It could be an animal, you know? Um, it could be, uh, uh, something mechanical, you know, it could be the voice of the wind. Like we just have, there's a lot of different options for that.
Kate:Could you like a very God-like voice? You know, so it
Calathea:We did, we did consider like a Morgan Freeman kind of thing, but we felt like, you know, so many people go with that. James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman kind of thing. We wanted something that sounded a little bit more unique.
Matt:we even afford them? Like I assume that they're,
Calathea:Oh no, definitely not. Yeah. I mean, we really lucked in by contracting with Zach Braff before he got a couple of movie deals and people like, you know, his career is up on the epic ed.
Matt:Um,
Calathea:able to like get him in at a really low point.
Kate:Yeah. I, I know that, like, we get really good deals when we work with celebrities who are going through some sort of, you know, public shaming. I feel like maybe post series a, we can get away from that strategy, you know, not just take the canceled celebrities, but some of the others
Calathea:yeah. I mean, I definitely think that that would be. know, nice. I do like that. They bring a little edginess to our brand that, um, that they breed, you know, that having a canceled celebrity really brings. And it just, it depends on the cancellation, you know what it's for?
Kate:Do we have a name yet for what our voice will be?
Calathea:don't actually, you know, I was thinking kind of Google, but we haven't really figured that out. I mean, the obvious choice is Bugsby and to have that be, you know, him
Matt:now that bugs me is emancipated.
Eric:Do we have the voice rights?
Matt:for that.
Calathea:Yeah. Let's not forget what happened in Iowa with his city council campaign. Um, you know, I will be honest, we are thinking about moving away from Bugsby as a mascot and really thinking about, um, new avenues to go down.
Eric:Oh my goodness.
Kate:Um,
Calathea:it's not, it's not official. We haven't decided obviously, um, you know, uh, but yeah.
Matt:you're having to go through that. Califia.
Eric:Uh,
Matt:heavy.
Calathea:Yeah, it's really difficult. He's become a real brand brisk and, you know, I have to separate my love for him as his progeneter with. Uh, my job to protect the brand of this company. And that's just put me in some really difficult times.
Kate:I went through the same thing with the mantis shrimp. I don't know if you've noticed they're not here anymore, but
Matt:I wonder.
Kate:it wasn't safe for them or for us anymore. Um, apparently I got some sort of genetically modified. Anyway, just trying to be empathetic.
Eric:we're really growing up.
Kate:Yeah,
Calathea:is that what's the hole in the wall is in the break room.
Kate:yeah. Yeah. They, they jump apparently in this version and are quite powerful.
Matt:Yeah, I mean, meant to shrimper, powerful. Like that's they punch, they punch it. Supersonic speeds. They create quantum physics effects in the water.
Calathea:Yeah.
Kate:true. It's true. Um, we thought that concrete walls would, would hold the back, but that's no, there's, there are some, I guess foundation issues I should say, on the operations team office. So we may be relocating.
Eric:oh, wow.
Kate:but for now we're all just trained in earthquake proofing. If, if we see the wall move, we don't how to evacuate quickly.
Matt:Oh, wow. Well, I hope
Calathea:oh, wow. Yeah.
Matt:hair. Mantis shrimp.
Kate:That's the saddest part. But anyway, um, okay. I guess we're good on standup then.
Matt:Yeah, I guess.
Kate:Good meeting folks. All right. I will see you all soon and I'll stop this recording.
Ben:This meeting has ended. To subscribe to this startup is being recorded. Go to the podcast player of your choice and tap a button that likely says subscribe. More content is on Twitter at startup recorded, or shoot us an email with ideas, feedback, or your personal startup horror story. At hello@startuprecorded.com. Kate is played by Valerie Garrison. Valerie is a health tech product manager and regularly plays with the improv troupe letters to chicken online. You can find her on Twitter at thevalgarris eric has played by Barry wright Barry is a product manager at Spotify and a co-founder of Highwire Improv. Find him by his name on LinkedIn, where he holds regular office hours or at highwireimprov.com. Matt is played by Marty Mcguire. Marty is a senior web engineer and improviser in New York city. You can find Marty's comedy code and cats on his website at M M G dot R E.