I don’t watch much TV anymore. I’ve subscribed to Sports Illustrated since I was 19, but I don’t pick it up until it’s been lying on the coffee table for a week. Even my favorite radio show, Gone Phishing on SiriusXM, isn’t a must-listen anymore. Everything is so contrived. Everything is hyped far beyond my ability to tolerate. The DJ on Gone Phishing, a guy named Jonathan Schwartz (who I actually enjoy), starts or ends the show with how “awesome” that night’s set was. [BTW Gone Phishing is a replay of a set of a Phish show going back to when they played random small (read: never heard of them) colleges in Vermont and going forward to shows played only weeks ago.] I like Phish, but life is a bell curve. Not all the shows are “awesome”. Some of them suck. A show broadcast recently featured the keyboardist, Page McConnell, doing a cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man, which Jonathan breathlessly previewed by saying Page “knocked it out of the park…” or some such BS. Actually, no he didn’t. Page isn’t a great singer, and he screwed up the lyrics at least once (which the band followed within a single beat, which was amazing). It was a noble attempt, but not close to a round-tripper. And this irritated me because…
Our little start-up has hit that point in the rom-com where the couple (who you know will be together at the end of the movie, because that’s what the trailer showed) break up due to some stupid misunderstanding. And yes, I know your beloved has dragged you to many a rom-com. Anyway, as some of you may know, a start-up is only as good as the funding you have to run. Most start-ups, including ours, don’t show a profit for a good long time if they ever show a profit at all. Many venture capitalists and shareholders don’t even care too much for profits. They want growth and a rising share price. These principles have made it possible for Jeff Bezos to pour millions into a clock in a hole in the ground while hiscompany barely makes any profit. But I digress as usual… The funding for our little start-up has slowed from a torrent to a dribble. We don’t lack for potential investors, so we’re all confused by the sudden orders to slow down. I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation and I’m also sure that I will be aghast when I find out what it is.
In order to brake from warp to walking, we have had to lay off most of our engineers and operators. Strangely the PR folks are still well represented, but some of the people who have helped us make significant strides are living on the dole (hopefully a temporary lull for them and the rest of us). Far be it from me to impugn the fine PR trade. It is a top-notch mind that can turn sh_t into gold with only a few well-spun sentences. It matters not whether you actually still have sh_t in your hand at the end of the paragraph as long as you think you’re holding pure 24 carats. However, in our case it shows that the image of our success is far more important than the actual success. Contrary to the commercials, image is not everything; image without all the facts is myth. Myth is everything.
We have a plant. That’s a fact. The plant can run and produce a product. That’s a fact. Our product conforms to all the quality parameters our potential customers might demand. That is also a fact. We can’t make a product at a profit (yet), but dear God do not tell anybody about that. It ruins the myth. When we drag these urchin venture capitalists out to verify that we are indeed the real deal, they don’t seem to be too interested in all the facts. I wonder if they even care. They see the bricks and mortar and pumps and pipe. They look at flow sheets and (unsurprisingly) sunny projections of yields. They aren’t really looking to make sure that we can make a buck. They are only looking to see if THEY can make a buck. The surest way for them to make a buck is to ensure that the myth will hold up to minimal scrutiny. The company value will go up and when we go public they can slough off their investment to some poor schlep who bought into the myth from his 34th floor office just off Wall Street. [Disclaimer – since start-ups are short on cash they often offer us stray dogs equity in lieu of salary and/or bonus, so I too would benefit from this. So why am I bitching about it? Simple – I’m an idiot.]
I grant you that this is a conundrum. Without the myth we would not attract investors, and without their money we would not be able to pay engineers and operators. However, without the engineers and operators we cannot produce anything, so we have to rely on the myth. If you are relying on the myth then you have to keep the PR folks close at hand, because they are the Rumpelstiltskins of the world, and the engineers become expendable. And when you are one of the few engineers left it leaves you with the feeling that they are fitting you for the blindfold next.
It’s a sickening sensation when folks who have been putting in 60 hrs/wk for the past 16 weeks are let go but others who come in at 9:30, Starbucks in hand, take two hours for lunch at La Merise, and leave at 3:30 are the ones who stay. The things in life that make you go, “mmm…wait…WTF?”
Let’s hope the myth does not turn into a fable.
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