E5 - Soviet Spies, Flammable Cereal, and Connected Couches

Agenda:

• Executive Standup 

Takeaways:

• Matt and Chelsea to follow-up about the Des Moines servers… which are somehow still on
• Calathea to reach out to her Russian study abroad friends(?) about if they know a Soviet handler named Parkov
• Approve the small grade explosives from Chelsea (once she submits her invoices!)
• Kate to not report Calathea to HR for the next week for looking at liberation front websites during work

Transcript

Ben: 0:07

welcome to this startup is being recorded. This recording is improvised fiction. Similarities between it and the real world are entirely intentional. Now enjoy the recording.

Kate: 0:22

And we're recording. Um, okay. Yep. So, uh, y'all. I don't know. John said he couldn't be here. Yeah, just that's literally all he said. So let's just get started. Um, just for the past area of the recording, I'm going to, of course give an overview. We work at Metta market. We are an up and coming. Rocket ship tech startup. We are working on making the future of trade better for everyone by giving everyone a more comfortable seat at the table. And of course we're starting with, with couches, couch, marketplace. Um, yeah, today's meeting. We just really it's our regular executive standup. Um, Matt, you've been here for a month.

Matt: 1:10

Congratulations. Well, Thank you all. It feels both like it's, uh, it was just yesterday that I joined and, um, geez. It feels like it's been a year. We've really been pushing hard.

Kate: 1:24

Yeah. Uh, actually we should all introduce ourselves. Do you want

Matt: 1:27

us to say yeah. Uh, hi, I'm uh, matt.yachts. That's also my domain and I am the, uh, the, the was the shine is off me. I'm no longer the new CTO I've been here for a month. I feel like I'm just CTO now here at rev.

Kate: 1:44

Yep. I'm uh, I'll go next. I'm Kate Blanchett, chief of staff to John, our amazing CEO who just sadly cannot be here today for reasons unknown. Um,

Calathea: 1:56

yeah. I'll, I'll go next time. Califia not a robot. I am the chief creative czar for the company.

Matt: 2:03

Sorry,

Eric: 2:05

your title.

Calathea: 2:06

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I really felt like I needed more. Literation in my name, you know?

Eric: 2:14

Right. Is it, is it, are you spelling it CZ or TZ?

Calathea: 2:19

Uh, I'm going to do T S you know, with the Russian spelling. Yeah. People don't know this, but I'm pretty sure my grandmother was Anastasia.

Kate: 2:32

She died as a child. Yeah.

Calathea: 2:36

Depends on what story you believe,

Matt: 2:39

like marks the Dreamworks version.

Calathea: 2:43

Yeah. I mean, that feels closer than the, you know, his most historical retellings, but, uh, her story is actually much wild or, uh, someday I'll sit you guys down and tell you a little bit about it, but not too much because I'm still trying to create that barrier between us and our work life. Sure,

Matt: 3:04

sure. Oh, The thing your psychic said. Okay. Yes. Um, yeah,

Eric: 3:11

yeah, yeah. Uh, Eric, Troy Carter, head of product at market and yeah. Wow. Had just a great dream last night.

Matt: 3:21

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I hit the ball

Eric: 3:24

like 460 feet this time though. It was like, dang. Really nice. Yeah, it was a good, good night. I feel

Matt: 3:29

I'm feeling ready to go today. That's far. That's like, that's a way outside of even most professional stadiums distance for congrats. Thanks.

Kate: 3:39

Okay. Um, okay. Just, just PSA. You all probably saw on the whiteboard, but we, people can not take the whiteboard markers into their own vegetable offices. Uh, if you have your own whiteboard, bring your own whiteboard. We are quickly running out, so,

Matt: 3:56

Hmm, good to know. Okay.

Kate: 3:59

Um, anyway, let's go ahead with, stand up. Uh, does anyone want to start today?

Matt: 4:06

Um, yeah, I can. I mean, I'll keep it short just in, uh, this meeting down. Yeah. Um, I've got the screening room reserved after this, so, uh, Yeah, I, uh, I just got back from, uh, New York, um, where now that we've got Des Moines all wrapped up and, uh, I think all of the metrics that we have available to us, we are crushing them. Uh, went up to the city and, um, have been working with, uh, with Chelsea, uh, who has agreed to take some time off from the couch, uh, mayoral campaign in Des Moines. Um, and, um, Well, the visit some of our competitors and make sure that, uh, the numbers are in our favor. I'll just put it that way. Anyway. It was a good trip. Very exciting. Cool.

Kate: 4:58

I actually have some updates on metrics too. Um, I know a couple of weeks ago we talked about the series a goal and like our strategy and that is executing well in most ways. Unfortunately, uh, Carter, um, did have a scan of his house done and identified a few of the plants. Um, and now is undergoing a full investigation using video footage from who has entered the house. Fortunately, I prepared for that naturally. Um, so I made it seem like his kid did it, but now I just need to, yeah. Now I just need to convince, uh, Roger. The story that I didn't give those to him. And so there's just a little bit of a memory. I don't want to say manipulation, but you know, we're just having to kind of blur his memory a little bit from those days. Um,

Matt: 5:58

wow. Yeah. Okay.

Kate: 6:01

But Matt, I will say those things you gave me are amazing. I didn't even know technology like that existed, honestly.

Matt: 6:09

Oh yeah. All right. Once you plug a device into somebody's home router, you've pretty much got the run of the place. And a lot of these things are not built for security. I'm really confused. How, how did Calvin find out? Do you know, like what, what twig them?

Kate: 6:29

So, I mean, th their entire house was basically hacked. I guess, the device that you gave. As you mentioned, doesn't have the best security. So some hackers got in there, uh, took down all of the devices in their house. They stole their credit cards, access to a lot of bank accounts. Their Tesla drove away by itself and yeah. Carter.

Matt: 6:59

Oh yeah. I saw that in the news. That was, that was our Calvin.

Kate: 7:03

Yeah. Calvin and Carter. Yeah. Are.

Matt: 7:10

Hang on. Okay. I'm just looking through some of the logging data we have here. See a lot of like normal requests come through the network. All right. And then I see, but like an hour before all of the, uh, hacker traffic started coming. Hang on this, this can't be right,

Kate: 7:36

please. Don't say we have something to do with the hacking.

Matt: 7:39

No, I think, um, wow. Okay. I feel like I may want to delete these logs. Let's let's just confirm some things first. Um, w what do we know about our investor's ties to, um, foreign espionage organism?

Kate: 8:01

I'm not supposed to talk about that stuff. Okay. Okay. I babysit their children. Okay. Kids hear everything and then they tell everyone, but I really feel like it's crossing the line. I mean, yes. I planted devices in our house to listen to everything that they say, but,

Matt: 8:19

but we, but we weren't aware that they were former Soviet intelligence.

Kate: 8:26

It wasn't confirmed.

Matt: 8:27

Okay.

Eric: 8:29

Well now this, this is good. This is good. Now, now we don't good. What now we don't have to, we don't have to wipe any kids' memories. We just, well, we can just blackmail it. The kid,

Calathea: 8:41

uh, do we know their handler over with the Soviet?

Kate: 8:48

I mean, they kept mentioning someone named park. they have a lot of stuffed animals named park HOV. Does that mean something?

Calathea: 9:00

I'm sorry. I, I'm not familiar with them, but I did study abroad in Russia for seven years, you know? And, uh, I can, I can talk to some of my friends back there to see if they can, you know, know any park of

Eric: 9:20

stuffed animals. Are we sure there weren't already devices in the house.

Matt: 9:26

That's a great question, Eric. And the, uh, the answer is we are now sure. That am aware that there were several great. Um,

Kate: 9:35

there were listening to our investors

Matt: 9:37

house. That's the good, the good news from our side. We have deniability on this. Um, yeah. From, from the logging that we picked up just before everything went haywire, the bad news is that, uh, It looks like our investor was working with some Ukrainian nationals on trying to push out the Russian influence from their country. And, uh, they, they, um, I don't, you know, I, this is let's just call it speculation, but I would guess that they were discovered by their own current or former handler. And, um, we're looking at retaliation for interference in. Like foreign in invasion into Ukraine.

Calathea: 10:23

Okay. Nobody panic. This is something that happens, you know, all the time, a question. Is there anything that will link our investor back to us in terms of the spying? You know, because generally the KGB like clean house procedure is murder.

Kate: 10:42

What are you saying? We're. I mean, the fact that we also had trackers in there and the child remembers all of this,

Matt: 10:52

Roger. Okay. Let's um, here I've deleted, uh, all of our logging and, uh, set the device to remote wipe. So as soon as it is powered on, or if any of the battery is available and it gets to a public network, uh, it will delete itself. Um, No direct ties to us, but, um, Katie, we have all

Kate: 11:17

the backups, remember all the servers and all of our city markets that are on those random startup cloud providers that we used, they were backing up everything.

Matt: 11:29

Yeah. K I, I didn't set that up for you on the sticks that I gave you. Those were all talking to a self-contained system over an encrypted channel. You didn't, you didn't plug these. To your own computer, did you? Well, I

Kate: 11:45

was on the VPN, so I thought that was secure.

None: 11:51

Oh, my God. Okay.

Eric: 11:53

Um,

None: 11:54

Hmm.

Matt: 11:56

Wow. Look at that. Okay. Data replication here at our home office, a back up copy to the USB drives that sit in the server room, uh, Des Moines, um, hang on to Moines. Once they were copied into the old data center into. The one that

Kate: 12:21

you've destroyed that one though, right?

Matt: 12:23

It's Chelsea. And I see, and I buried it under a concrete. We buried it under concrete and I, I, I could swear that I unplugged it. It should not be powered on.

Calathea: 12:40

Well, luckily we know that Chelsea is very adept to handle to Moines. I mean, I would just be worried about other centers.

Matt: 12:48

Yeah. Okay. Well, most of the stuff is in the cloud, so it's easy enough to backtrack. Uh, yep. Okay. I've set these things. They'll auto delete at our next maintenance window, uh, which I think is

Kate: 13:05

be 1:00 AM. Um,

None: 13:08

yeah, so

Kate: 13:13

on Monday we had that office garage sale, you know, the, the coworking space said, everyone just bring any extra stuff you have to sell. And we just, we just had so many USB drives. I really felt like we were moving to the cloud. We didn't need them. Is there a way to confirm that those were definitely not the same USB tribes.

Matt: 13:38

Kate, I gave you four USB drives to go with the four investors that you babysit for and plug them into the routers on their home networks. How many did you actually plug in?

None: 13:53

Well, uh,

Kate: 13:58

I did plug in. But I plugged in, but that was the same day I did a cleanup of the office. And so I thought they were just, it didn't matter what USB drive they were. So I took all the USB drives from the office. I plugged in for, to the investors homes. I sold 10 at the startup garage sale and we still have six in the office.

None: 14:21

Um,

Eric: 14:23

there's not a good time for this standup update. So I'm just going to jump in. I'm excited to announce that we launched our connected couch program today. Um, so the last thousand couches that we've shipped are connected to the internet. Um, there's a nice little remote control panel on the left hand arm. And, uh, it comes with a nice little welcome package, um,

None: 14:54

in a

Eric: 14:54

USB drive.

None: 14:57

And the USB

Matt: 14:58

drive and a USB drive. Yeah.

None: 15:02

Um, yeah,

Calathea: 15:06

I just want to record before we move on with this truly horrific event that I have approved or Chelsea to get some small, great queried explosives in that can come out of the marketing budget, just when she submits those invoices, Kate.

Matt: 15:24

Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Eric: 15:28

Can we go on the offense?

Kate: 15:31

How are small grid explosives? Not the offense.

Eric: 15:35

Fair enough.

Matt: 15:39

Okay. Um, okay. Uh, you know, this is on me. I just, I would like to step up and take responsibility, uh, for this. Uh, goof up and I'm going to take responsibility for getting it right. Okay. Um, I should have been more careful with the USB drives. I gave you, I should not have picked up the ones that were part of our unbranded. I still don't know why they were unbranded or unbranded USB sticks that we were going to be using in our connected couch program. There's not going to be a next time, but if there was, I would make sure that, uh, they would be anonymous, but somehow distinct from the thousand that are going to go out to our customers.

Kate: 16:29

It's not the time for a retrospective. I great. We can all agree. No,

Eric: 16:35

no,

Kate: 16:35

Eric, we cannot keep having retrospectives in the middle of other

None: 16:38

meetings.

Matt: 16:41

Okay. Here's here's

Eric: 16:42

the, we're going to forget some of the important details and it's not going to be.

Matt: 16:47

Um, I've sent out a kill to all of our connected USB sticks if they have our shared base firmware. Okay. Uh, they're going to go down. This is going to be a minor inconvenience for our connected couch folks. Uh, but Hey, text groups happen all the time. They were in our beta program. We'll send them out something new. So wherever these USB sticks are, uh, the. They're wiped a as soon as they touch the network, they're going to destroy themselves.

Eric: 17:16

I've got one right here.

Matt: 17:17

Let's, let's make sure I wouldn't plug that into anything

Kate: 17:22

now, what is it going to do to

Matt: 17:23

it? Uh, it's going to destroy itself.

Kate: 17:27

What will it do to all the things that's connected to?

Matt: 17:30

Um, nothing directly, but there is going to be a very brief moment of high voltage, electricity and intense heat.

Kate: 17:40

Three of those are still plugged in investors' houses.

Matt: 17:44

Yeah. They should just fizzle out on their own and not create any problems as long as the is not like a, you know, crammed under a bunch of laundry or in a very tiny closet next to a bunch of kindling. I mean, where it we're talking a very brief moment.

Kate: 18:02

What if, what if it was in a room? Uh, like a pantry with a lot of like paper. It's just that I happened to set up the router and a few of these investors houses and they, despite having giant mansions don't want to expose any of their electronics. And so I thought a pantry is easy to

Matt: 18:24

access. It'll be fine. It should just fizzle out and become inert. Um, if the. If the procedure doesn't work exactly right. There may be an external sparker too, and hopefully not enough to catch a fire, you know, but I would, um, when are you scheduled to go to that investor's house next?

Kate: 18:50

Uh, tonight actually, let me just text them. I'll just, it'll be a really innocuous texts. Like, Hey, looking forward to seeing you.

Matt: 18:59

Yeah. And just, I don't know, maybe ask them to check if they've got some favorite cereal in the pantry.

None: 19:06

Okay.

Calathea: 19:07

And if it is burning, can you just throw in a couple of Sequoia seeds because they are becoming endangered in California and they can only spring to life through fire.

Matt: 19:20

Kathy. I hate to say, I feel like that is scope creep for, for this. Um, I

Eric: 19:26

appreciate the long-term thing. I

Calathea: 19:28

am just really trying to make the best out of a really bad situation. Yeah.

Eric: 19:33

Well, it's up, let's not panic. Last

Calathea: 19:36

weeks. We can tap these Sequoia trees towards our carbon offsets.

Matt: 19:42

Okay. So it's true. If you get there tonight and there is burning in the pantry, then you can bring those Sequoia seeds.

Kate: 19:50

Oh, dang it. They texted me back. Uh, it's just firearm.

Eric: 20:00

Well, what cereal did you ask them about?

Kate: 20:03

What, what do you mean? What Cyril? I just, I just said, Hey, I'm

Matt: 20:07

coming through. It's like a Firebase cereal,

Eric: 20:10

the cereal, maybe they're excited. Maybe you decided to have a friend who likes raisin bran. I pick out the raisins, but still my favorite

Kate: 20:19

raisin bran, they have a special cereal that's custom made for them. I don't know what it's made out of that is rich.

Matt: 20:27

Hmm, that sounds

Kate: 20:28

okay. Well,

Eric: 20:29

okay. Well they're aware of the fire. They're going to get out. They

Matt: 20:32

have insurance. Yeah. Or they'll be able to extinguish it. I'm sure. Yeah. You know, you taught the kids. I'm sure the kids know basic fire safety.

Kate: 20:42

They do. They're so good at it. Okay. Can

Calathea: 20:45

you back up for a second? You said that they get accustomed serial made.

Kate: 20:50

Yeah.

Calathea: 20:52

Is that flakes by Jorge?

Kate: 20:55

Yeah.

Calathea: 20:57

Oh, my God. Great. This is so wonderful sometimes. Or he puts activated charcoal into it and it has been known to cause small fires for small cleansing fires. They already have many YouTube videos of this serial catching on fire. It's part of an amazing viral marketing campaign. Wow. We have deniability.

Eric: 21:22

Okay. Twice now.

Matt: 21:24

Okay. Okay. Okay. We've got deniability. Yup. We've shut the devices down. There's there's no data trail. Uh, well, once Chelsea gets done in Des Moines, there will be no data trail. And that just leaves Roger, remembering that you gave him

Kate: 21:40

the USB stick. Right, right, right. Um, okay.

Matt: 21:46

Okay. How do you feel about changing your appearance in.

Kate: 21:51

I mean not great.

Matt: 21:55

Do, uh, does Roger or this investor's family, did they know about, um, I don't know any siblings that you might have something to, to make it deniable that it was you that perhaps Roger interacted with, uh, your twin who happens to be a Soviet spy.

Kate: 22:11

Oh, I'm not going to pin this on my twin. Okay. I don't care. You have a 20. Yeah, I assumed you knew that when you mentioned my twin.

Matt: 22:22

Oh, uh, no. Yeah. I definitely don't want to put this on a real person. I, it was just kind of a trope. I was going, sorry. Um,

Kate: 22:31

yeah. Oh, but we can make up that. I have a triplet. Is that what.

Matt: 22:36

That seems like a far stretch. Yeah,

Kate: 22:39

I, this is too much. This is too much. Let me just work with Roger. Okay. We have lots of like mental mind exercises we do every day and I feel like I can work one of those in to somehow create some sort of false memory for him.

Calathea: 22:54

Oh, if you're working on false memories, I have a lot of resources for that, honestly. Um, I have recordings that will help poof, wipe, sweat. Clean, you know, that is

Kate: 23:07

all. Can you pinpoint a memory and just wipe that one?

Calathea: 23:12

Well, I mean, it's not an exact science here. It's more of an art form, but yes, you can do some guiding exercises to wipe clean, like a specific period of time. Did anything good happen to him in the past couple of days?

Kate: 23:35

I mean, he, he completed his like penguin NFT collection.

Calathea: 23:45

Well, if that can be just wiped clean, I don't see that seems to be of zero importance. Uh, so you still have

Eric: 23:52

to code, so

Calathea: 23:54

yeah,

Kate: 23:54

that's true. Okay. Okay. Well let's take this offline. I think I'll need that from you as, as much as I've avoided trying to utilize any of your personal, uh, guidances. Let's do it.

Calathea: 24:09

Yes, of course. Even though they come very handy. I mean, situations, you know, you always said we to HR, when my browser goes to certain websites of what I would call liberation, front organizations, but all of a sudden, when we find ourselves Toe to toe to the KGB, who's going to save you. That's Califia right now,

None: 24:31

I get

Kate: 24:31

it. I'm sorry, I will. I mean, I am HR, but I will stop reporting to HR for at least a week, so.

Matt: 24:41

Okay. So could we check back in?

Kate: 24:43

Um, yeah, so we'll give you guys an update. Um,

Matt: 24:47

so 30, 30 days into, uh, my 90 day ultimatum to make us appear as the top couch marketplace in all four of our markets. Um, I think we were on a good pace until, uh, the, the PSYOP campaign against the investors kind of went sideways. Um, good news is all of our metrics such as we have them are still up. The bad news is it's not clear whether, uh, that's going to stick to the investors without some new plan. So I don't think we should try the same trick twice. Let's all brainstorm and, uh, and try to come up with a new way to make sure the investors seem Metta market as the top couch marketplace, whether that is true or not. That's right. And I just, I just want to be clear. This is, this is not how things are going to be. Uh, we're going to secure this. And we are going to be that couch marketplace are how we're going to expand. We're going to break out a couches. We're going to break into new markets. Uh we're we're going to take Bugsby everywhere. Um, it's just, they saddled us with something impossible was something absurd and we don't deserve to have to live through that by the rules.

Kate: 26:16

That's right. That's

Matt: 26:18

right. Um, do you feel like you've been working here more than a month? Yeah, I guess I feel like, um, you know, it really feels like a part of this place. Like I care a lot about what happens. Yeah.

Kate: 26:32

Uh Califia I know we didn't get to you and stand up. Is there anything like, really urgent that you have to report? Otherwise we should. Uh,

Calathea: 26:42

I can talk a little bit later about how the free Bugsby campaign has been going on and just the burden that I have as a single mother of a very, very needy child. But, um, you know, family stuff must always wait, I guess,

Kate: 27:03

family stuff. That's right. Okay, well with that, I'm going to stop the recording

Matt: 27:10

and I'm going to go to the screening.

Eric: 27:13

Oh yeah.

Matt: 27:14

She

Ben: 27:18

This meeting has ended. To subscribe to this startup is being recorded. Go to the podcast player of your choice and tap a button that likely says subscribe. More content is on Twitter at startup recorded, or shoot us an email with ideas, feedback, or your personal startup horror story. At hello@startuprecorded.com. Kate is played by Valerie Garrison. Valerie is a health tech product manager and regularly plays with the improv troupe letters to chicken online. You can find her on Twitter at the vulgaris. Eric has played by Barry. Right. Barry is a product manager at Spotify and a co-founder of high-wire improv. Find him by his name on LinkedIn, where he holds regular office hours or@highwireimprov.com. Matt is played by Martin Maguire. Marty is a senior web engineer and improviser in New York city. You can find Marty's comedy code and cats on his website at M M G dot R E. Califia is played by Robin Stegman. Robin is a digital campaign manager for ocean Conservancy and is a comedian mostly found at Highwire improv. You can find her on all the social medias. And she does mean all at our steaky. Thank you for listening.