Let us go then, me and I,
When the seed stage stretches out against the sky
Like a student etherized
By college education;
Let us go through certain half-deserted meetups,
Twitterring retweets
Of restless nights in one night cheap hotels
For sapless conferences we pay to pitch
The uninformed bravado comments
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “Is it on Android?”
Let us go and build our product.

In the room, associates come and go
Talking of startup deal flow

And indeed there will be time
To wonder “do I dare?” and “do I dare?”
Will I make your partners billionaires?
With a three to five year plan that scales—
(They will say “His distribution channel’s thin!”)
My user base, my cost to bring them in
Retention rich and modest, but engagement like LinkedIn.
(They will say, “How his team is very green!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For the pivots and re-pivots that a board room will reverse.

In the room, associates come and go
Talking of startup deal flow

For I have emailed them already, boomeranged them all:
Jigsawed sales in evenings, mornings, afternoons,
Burn rate measured out in coffee spoons.
I know the startups dying with a dying fall
Beneath the Entrepreneurship Thought Leaders
and the Calacanis from a farther room.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth the opportunity cost,
After the Series A round, and the B
After preparing the report, after the board room scuffle
And this, and so much more? —
It is impossible to sell just what we have!

But as if a magic CFO threw revenues in patterns in Excel:
Would it have been worth the license
If one, boarding Virgin Airlines, or checking in the W,
And turning towards the black car, should say:
“That is not it all,
That does not scale, at all.”

No! I am not Mark Suster, nor was meant to be;
Am an un-blogging soul, one that will do
To send a term sheet, book a flight or two,
Advise the founder; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to make an intro,
Visionary, skeptic, and meticulous;
Full of disruptive revolution
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous
Almost, at times, the Foo.