Morgan Chen

blue bottle, kibo wedged against my leg, half-reading the Times and not really retaining any of it. apartment's quiet except the espresso machine doing its little angry hiss. still kind of carrying yesterday around tbh

saw Devon sent another HN link at 2-something last night. didn't open it. just noted the timestamp and laughed. we're fully in recurring bit territory now, like ok man, tell me about databases after sunrise

late jan and i think we're at... decent pace? not smooth exactly. sleep's been bad in that annoying way where i don't notice til midafternoon and then i'm useless for like 20 min. next month looks crowded already. a lot a lot. not spiraling, just kind of braced. jamie's on evenings again and kibo keeps doing laps between the kitchen and the door like he's running ops

Monday. Two deck review blocks before lunch, customer call at 2, trying to keep the rest from getting shredded by random internal stuff. gym after if i can get out on time. probably Blue Bottle first.

just got off w Devon. we're not posting anything now. call it what it is -- we punted hiring til post-raise. not some big principle, just if we can't answer what 14 changes that 12 doesn't, adding a req right now is gonna create work and story drift. keep the latest headcount pass handy but don't move on recruiters or JD drafts.

IF is pretty loose this month if i'm being real. had a granola bar at 11 while staring at Linear and just kind of shrugged. not even a cheat day vibe, more like ok sure, this is what we're doing

Acme had another little wobble. Customer-facing rate limit thing for maybe 15 min, then cleared once they fixed it on their side. Logged it with the timestamps. No note out.

monday done. hiring call still sitting there, gonna sleep on it one more night. got kibo his full walk at least. jamie's on late shift so i'm home with leftovers and a very muddy dog

Devon can you review deck v2 tonight. Need another pass on the chart choices -- still too easy for this to read like we backed into the story, and I want that cleaned up before we send anything wider.

sun's out lol. first time in what, a week? whole apartment looks different. Jamie just said we should take Kibo out right now before SF remembers it's january again

Stop putting vendor calls on Fridays. Keep Fridays light unless it's a real emergency -- I need room for the team stuff that always spills there, and random sales-y meetings just wreck the day.

slack is still litigating the espresso machine at 9pm lol. just watched my phone light up with "flush first" vs "stop touching the pressure valve" like anyone's opening a cafe in there. i'm laughing and also fully expect to read 18 more messages before bed

Acme had another small thing this morning. nothing huge, just enough to be annoying again. I wrote down the timestamps in my notes -- third recent one by my count now. keep an eye. if support pings anything that smells related, tag me before it gets rounded down to "transient".

Move the Friday 1:1 with Devon to Monday. He's traveling.

slept like an actual person last night and wow, not subtle. hit 3pm without that gross wall. home now, jamie's on late shift again so it's me + leftover noodles + kibo doing laps by the kitchen

ok so B stuff is finally in a real state. deck v2 is decent now, not done-done but the story tracks and the ugly chart problems are mostly down to 2 slides instead of 8. Devon's notes helped. i've got ~8 intro calls booked for early Feb, mostly where i wanted them, and the lead-firm meeting is locked for week 2. still think partner-level chemistry matters way more than people admit at this stage, so i'm treating the first calls as filtering not just pitching. also trying not to let us wander into enterprise-AI wallpaper language in the deck -- if we say "developer workflow" one more vague time i'll delete the whole page lol. leaning keep the metrics section tighter: net new ARR, retention shape, expansion by cohort, then one customer slide with actual names and not anonymous logo soup. that's probably enough.

Jake circled back on Discord. again. lol. I just stared at it over a Blue Bottle cortado like... man. we're trying to raise. not doing the whole 'yes customers, your infra vendor runs on Discord now' thing

Put a hold note on the JD draft. Not closing it, not posting it. Something like: we're pausing this search until post-raise and will reopen if the headcount line still makes sense at 14. I don't want the old version floating around like it's active -- that's how this stuff lingers.

start of february somehow. feel... cautiously ok? office finally quieted down. cooking in tonight, nothing ambitious, just noodles and whatever's still good in the fridge. jamie's at ucsf late again so me + kibo doing laps around the kitchen

Embarcadero finally dried out enough to run without eating it on the slick parts. weirdly warm for February. legs felt good today. grabbed Blue Bottle after and Kibo is now acting like I abandoned him personally

month's just getting started. weirdly i'm not dreading feb. it's just... here already in my head. deck edits, the same 8 slides again, partner calls, all of it. jan felt longer from the inside than it probably was. q4 cleanup still hanging around in little annoying ways. anyway. jamie's out late and kibo is parked by the door like he has a shift too.

jamie made pancakes, kibo did the full pathetic-face routine under the table, and the apartment is weirdly quiet for once. gray out but not cold. coffee's decent. i'm not touching the deck for like... an hour

Sunday prep for next week. five meetings in four days so i'm gonna pace this pretty hard -- deck pass tonight, then rehearse the first 2-3 walk-in lines til they sound normal and not too polished. mostly want clean openings and enough space between calls that i don't fry by Wednesday. Devon has the data room stuff; i just need to not improvise dumbly.

First one in 90. suit day. Blue Bottle and one clean pass on the opener before i leave -- want the first 5 min tight, no wandering into roadmap stuff unless they pull it there. head's actually clear for once.

first B-round pitch done. Feb 6 and i can still feel the room humming a little lol. Room was with her the whole time. caught Devon right after and basically: close, this one's going to land. not trying to get ahead of it. just... yeah. felt good.

didn't run. looked up and it was already deck edits + two investor threads and somehow 10:30. annoying. Kibo kept doing laps by the door like ok are we going or not

Move tomorrow's 3 to 4. And book a conf room 5-6 for Devon debrief.

day 1 done. a lot of talking. deck held up ok. jamie's on shift so it's just me + kibo on the couch and he's fully gone already. gonna try to be unconscious by 11

ok so. back-to-backs again till 4. deck cleanup in the gaps, then investor at 11 and the product demo one at 2. coffee's doing most of the work rn. if anything non-urgent shows up, move it.

Two today. First one was fine, nothing weird, deck held up ok. Have the next in an hour so I'm doing a quick pass on the numbers slide and then back on Zoom.

this embarcadero tower lobby is so aggressively expensive-looking. marble everywhere, no one talking, just the fountain doing its little corporate spa thing. been here 12 min and i think my soul left around minute 4

Devon and I started a literal counter for "at scale" today. 3 by lunch. one investor got two in the same answer lol. it's becoming a game now -- if someone says it in the first 10 min, tally mark.

long day. jamie already out. i'm eating leftover noodles standing at the counter bc if i sit down that's probably it. kibo did one lap and gave up lol

3 meetings today and my legs are weirdly cooked already. gonna do one coffee now, one around 1, not more than that -- if i go past 2 cups i get fake-productive and talk too fast. want 20 clear before the second one to reset + look at the notes again.

skipped again. second morning in a row. not even for a good reason, just sat there with coffee and my calendar open til the window was gone. Kibo was staring at me like ok cool.

cut through FiDi between meetings. cold enough that every corner was a slap, but the sky was weirdly clear. all glass + hard sun. kind of nice for 12 min

jamie's on nights so i took kibo out, but it was basically one lap and back. he did the whole hopeful pause at the other corner like we were keeping going. felt bad. windy enough that even he seemed over it by the end tho

still in the deck. retention slide is the problem. the chart is technically fine but it doesn't carry the argument on its own -- logo retention looks decent, NRR looks better, but without the cohort revenue view and a few named expansions it feels like i'm asking them to be generous. Devon's got the raw cuts in Sheets, i pulled a cleaner export into Slides, still soft. not gonna force it at 10:30pm and make it worse. saving this one for tomorrow when my brain works.

ok so just two today, 10 and 2. want the gap left mostly alone for follow-ups and deck tweaks if the first one shakes anything loose. slept like garbage somehow still pretty on. if random stuff comes in this morning, move it.

two today and both were strong. not doing the victory lap thing but yeah. told Devon after the second one we're close, this one's gonna land. nailed it.