VC-funded Startups (a song written by me)

OK, I haven't posted in a while. OK, for a month. But I've been busy. Came out of retirement to a job (and maybe to a PhD program). More on those topics later, maybe.

On the job I've been meeting with all sorts of entrepreneurial types; people who have started companies, people who want to start companies, people who want to know people who want to start companies. [They're the luckiest people in the world.] When I'm with the old hands we reminisce about the startups, good and bad, that we've been in. Talking about the bad ones makes for way better war stories.

All this talk about bad companies reminded me that I've had a song working it's way out of my subconscious for many years now. To be sung to the tune of Tom Lehrer's National Brotherhood Week:

Oh, developers hate the testers
And the testers hate developers
To hate all your coworkers
Is a standard management tool

But in a VC-funded startup
VC-funded startup
PhDs and MBAs
Don't cross each other up
It's fun to use the guys
Who do stuff you despise
As long as you are sure you got more stock

Oh, the ops guys hate the apps guys
And the apps guys hate the ops guys
The new CEO hates the wise guy
Who happens to be the founder

But in a VC-funded startup
VC-funded startup
Everyone can get along if
We don't f**k it up
Who cares which products won't
As long investors don't
Howjya think the tall blond made his mint

Oh, the customers hate the sales force
And the sales force hates the customers
And the management hates the chairman
And everybody hates marketing

But in a VC-funded startup
VC-funded startup
Get big or go home, that the way
No prize for runner-up
Why should you get along,
With people who are wrong?
Who cares your stupid job is getting old --
You only have to wait until we're sold!

They have a word for it

Recondite readers will find it useful to know that Department of Homeland Security renders to German as Ministeriums für Heimatsicherheit.

Sounds so much better.

Let's play, "What's the real problem?"

In the spirit of Harper's Index, here are some numbers for you.

1. Projected federal debt over next ten years: $5.8 trillion.
2. Social security program surplus, same period: $2.6 trillion.
3. Anwar estimated reserves: 10.4B barrels.
4. Anwar reserves into US consumption at current rates: 17 months.
5. Annual US healthcare spending: $1.6 trillion.
6. Total costs of malpractice cases: $24 billion (or, 0.024 trillion, if you prefer).

It's not that the administration is on the wrong side of every issue, it's that they pick the wrong issues in order to obscure our country's real priorities. Don't let them get away with it!

One death a tragedy, millions a statistic

I swore I wasn't going to watch the SOTU. Really, I turned on the TV by accident, preparing to cue-up a DVD (Yimou Zhang's Hero, if you must know). I had tuned-in during one of those applause lines for someone being singled-out in the gallery. I saw a close-up on what were probably the parents of some dead soldier, and then cut to our fearless leader...beginning to tear-up.

Gee, as a balance to this cheap sentimentality, maybe the broadcast could have had a crawl at the bottom of the screen pointing out that given the 1440 US troop deaths in Iraq as of today, there are thousands more parents just like these two — only they won't fit in the gallery.

Vincit qui patitur

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometime against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

— Thomas Jefferson, 1798 (quoted by Paul Glastris)