Morgan Chen

Elena Volkov sent the no from the VC firm. passed on the round, but not boilerplate at all. long note. I read it twice in the car. her main push was the retention funnel -- basically didn't buy that we've earned the shape we're implying there yet. annoying bc she's not wrong on the weak spot, but also... thoughtful. keeping her in the later bucket.

Starting to come back a little. Cleared a couple dumb admin things, replied to the emails I'd been side-eyeing, finally looked at the calendar without instantly closing it. Nothing dramatic. Just feels like small stuff is possible again.

tuesday. two softs on the calendar, 11 and 3. gonna do one skim of the partner notes and stop messing with the deck. bracing a little, not spun up. just need to be sharp for 45 min twice.

Feb 21. two more soft investor conversations and then a walk with Devon. not a big dramatic thing, just... ok. we're not raising this month. saying it out loud helped a little. the round is deferred. that's the shape of it. came back to a weirdly empty afternoon. Kibo's asleep under the table.

jamie gave kibo the deluxe version tonight. came back with mud halfway up his legs and that completely zonked look. honestly good. for him and for jamie too i think

ran this morning. first time in like 2 weeks. slow as hell and kibo absolutely had more range than me but whatever, did the loop by the panhandle and didn't bail halfway so... counts

ok so i think the board note is basically: stop pretending Q2 is the story. bridge from the inside gets us cleanly into H2, and then Q3 launch is the thing people can actually underwrite. not gonna write it that stiff, but that's the shape. if we keep saying "just a little more time on the same plan" it sounds weak. better to be direct that the market for this round wasn't there on terms we'd take, we have existing investors willing to support, and the spend posture changes now -- tighter hiring, keep eng on launch-critical path, no random GTM experiments. Devon should probably carry the cash line + runway math since he'll have the less hand-wavy version. i want the note to read like a decision, not fallout.

Block Thursday 2-4 for Devon. Working session on the H2 plan.

note to self: Priya really nailed the onboarding polish. tiny stuff but all the weird edges are gone now, copy reads cleaner, handoff feels obvious. she's been on a tear lately

keep thinking about that Q3 2022 weekend. we kind of treated it like random bad luck bc the blast radius was small and it hit at a lucky time, but we never wrote any of it down. idk. bothering me now more than it did then. jamie's still at the hospital and kibo keeps doing laps to the kitchen for no reason

Board prep's pretty tight. Got through the numbers pass with Devon and the deck is mostly there, just needs the ugly cuts. Running on backup batteries a bit tbh. Jamie left coffee on the counter and I still almost forgot it.

ok so the office espresso machine is weirdly usable now. whoever bumped the temp finally got it right -- pulled a decent shot just now. kinda impressed tbh. might stop doing the downstairs coffee run

Went back to Elena's note. The retention funnel thing she called out is basically the same shape I've heard in 4 other rooms, just said cleaner. not in a mean way, more like: people buy the top of it and then get nervous when they trace what happens after week 2. filing that under real, not just her.

it's 72 in february and everyone outside is acting like we personally earned it. dudes fully posted up in dolores at 3 on a thursday. weirdly sweet tbh. i am... less springlike than the rest of san francisco rn

thursday done. mood's a notch better than yesterday, i'll take it. jamie made soup or some kind of stew, apartment smells insane. kibo already parked by the kitchen like he's on payroll

friday. eng sync first, then the 1 with the customer team. gonna keep the internal one tight -- just unblock the migration stuff and move. started early so i'm trying to be done early too. no drift today.

Devon 1:1 was good. cleared the weirdness from last week without making it a whole thing. we're back to normal cadence now, which honestly matters more than whatever the actual disagreement was about. he's in the room on the right stuff again.

Remind me Monday morning to send the board pre-read.

ferry building was packed. got there late enough that all the insane citrus people had already done their thing, which honestly helped. jamie found the good mushrooms, i got coffee without standing in a 20 min line, kibo got exactly one piece of cheese from a kid in a beanie. small win.

on a blanket at Dolores w Jamie and Kibo's being insanely democratic about whose snack he's trying to steal. sun's out, people are doing the dumb shirtless volleyball thing, and for once my brain is not in a dataroom. feels weirdly normal

ok so this week finally looks like a week again. jamie dinner monday, board call thursday, a couple normal internal things in between. not pretending everything's magically reset but it feels less weird than the last two weeks. kibo's been asleep under the table most of the afternoon. house is quiet.

Monday. board prep starts this morning, mostly want the frame right before i get lost in slides. a few investor follow-ups in the middle, then trying to keep the afternoon from getting chewed up. dinner with Jamie tonight and i'd like to actually make that one.

Book the little Italian spot on Valencia for dinner w Jamie tonight. Quiet table if they can do it.

dinner ran long. actually talked about feb like normal people for once, not in little drive-by fragments between me opening my laptop again. no big breakthrough or anything. just... there. Jamie was softer by the end. glad we did it

Slept ok for once. Coffee's doing its job. Have a couple cleanup things this morning and then product review this afternoon, which weirdly I'm actually looking forward to. Feels nice to want to be in a meeting again.

Devon said "at scale" in the meeting and I fully lost it. like actual laugh out loud, couldn't hide it. joke's back apparently

warm again. fully skipped the jacket walking home and it felt wrong for like 2 blocks, then not wrong at all. the weather is doing a pretty convincing early-spring impression rn

Priya 1:1 was good. she's pretty fired up about the Q3 stuff, in a real way, not fake rah rah. noticed it right away. good energy there. keep an eye on it a bit -- feels like she's got some real momentum rn

ok so for thurs deck i'm changing the spine a bit. not gonna pretend the round slipped bc we missed execution -- by the product bar / team bar we did what we said. the miss was timing + buyers freezing + budgets getting weird, and i think saying that cleanly is better than contorting into fake self-flagellation. need one slide on the bridge that is actually concrete -- amount, months, what it buys, what we are not hiring. probably show base case on current burn and the q3 push as the point where we re-open offense. not gonna call it a reset. just bridge + targets. also need to name the retention hole plainly -- logo retention is decent, usage on the core cohorts is better than the topline makes it look, but we still don't have the clean expansion/seat story in one place. Devon has pieces in Looker, CS has the renewal notes, none of it ties out clean enough for board yet. i'd rather say data gap than overclaim -- reason is they'll smell it immediately if we sand it down.

sent Elena a note back. kept it light, just said her email was actually useful and asked if she wanted to grab coffee sometime in March. she said yes. no big thing, just felt worth keeping warm -- she was paying real attention.

Another small Acme thing. Webhook that should've fired just didn't, looked like it got dropped somewhere upstream. Flagged it to Jake with the request ID and timestamps. that's it for now.

deck's in decent shape. good enough for tonight anyway. gonna stop touching it before i make it worse. jamie's already home. early bed sounds unreal

wrote the Drift Capital thing down so i stop re-litigating it. four discovery calls was enough. passed. board observer language was too grabby, the IP carve-out stuff got weird, and i really don't want a tranche tied to MAU. not a fit. logged it as evaluated and passed. jamie's home late and kibo is doing laps for no reason

11 board. deck's done, mostly just tightening the numbers slide and making sure i don't start freelancing in the middle of it. bracing a little tbh but i know the material. gonna keep the morning clean till then -- no random inbound if i can help it.

board call on Mar 2 was fine. supportive overall. retention question came up again and they were right to push on it. we still don't have the sharper numbers, just the blended story that looks cleaner than it is. i agreed that's a Q2 deliverable -- real month-12 cut, cohort by cohort, and the version with the one fat early customer stripped out. section 3 is why i've been hesitating on the April deck draft. not a wording thing. data thing. gonna have Devon pull the raw cuts from the warehouse instead of another csv export bc i don't trust the hand-shaped sheet anymore

board done. fine, actually. not gonna look at that deck again tonight if i can help it. tomorrow can just be product for a minute. jamie's making eggs and kibo is parked by the stove like he's on payroll

made this its own lane now. Devon's gonna work the retention cleanup w accounting and send the cohort-by-cohort month 12 cut, not the blended thing. also want the version with the throttled accounts stripped -- that was muddying it. i'm stepping off as the operator on this one -- too many ways for me to accidentally shape the answer.

Move Tuesday 3pm to Wednesday morning. Need that afternoon open for Q3 thinking.

that month is over. kind of a bruised one. still here though. alive. the next one can come. jamie's ordering dumplings and kibo's doing that heavy sigh thing from the rug like he also had meetings

ran with Jamie, got coffee after, and the whole city feels weirdly unclenched today. glad that month is over. Kibo is asleep under the table like he also closed something out lol