This Startup is being Recorded
This Startup is being Recorded
E9 - Taxes are Due! Fuuuu...
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Agenda:
- Emergency meeting (again)! Taxes are due we need our employer ID number from Iowa
Takeaways:
- Kate to complete taxes
- Matt taking a Lyft ASAP to the airport
- Everyone delete the medical records from their phone
- Thea to feed the office cat
- Someone to re-register Meta Market in Iowa
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.
Katehey everybody. Okay. So the recording's on, um, let's try to make this one not too long. I know. I'm sorry. I had to like pull you guys away from things during like this holiday week, but, um, we just
Mattno, it's okay. I was able to reschedule my flight. So beyond the.
KateGood.
MattLike this never happened. Assuming we get the sink done. So
KateYeah. I mean, it's just, it should be easy. Right. We just need to find the EIN number of better market. That's it? I just, I would
Mattlike our federal tax ID,
KateYeah.
Mattmust already have that.
Kateexactly. We definitely have it somewhere. Definitely.
MattWell, hang on. I mean, that's, that's on, uh, like that's on my tax, uh, stuff. I got my first couple of checks as a contractor before it went through. So I've got the, the federal EIN right here. Is this, is this the one you're looking for?
Kateoh, no, we're looking for Iowa. Iowa has a very specific tax code and they have a different EIN,
MattOh yeah.
Katefederal one, which. Anyway, sorry. But before we dig in, um, just to recap for anyone who ends up listening to this recording, uh, where Mehta market, um, for now very shortly that'll change, uh, we're a couch marketplace. We're looking to, you know, revolutionized trade in so many ways. Um, and today we are just holding a quick, probably very quick meeting to look very Iowa tests. Uh, I'm Kate I'm the chief of staff here. Um, I worked directly under John. Uh, John has told me that he explicitly does not want to know about anything having to do with finances, unless it just requires a signature. So naturally I didn't invite him.
MattRight. Uh, hi, I'm Matt, matt.yachts. I am the CTO here at metal market. And, um, I guess if it's on a Dropbox, I can probably help you find it. Otherwise I don't know what I'm doing at this meeting.
KateYeah, we did use that once.
MattOh, good.
KateAnybody. Sorry.
MattI'll actually, I'll start looking.
Theaanother Roba. Yeah, I'm also not sure, even though I, I mean, I do know that when Richard was here, I was well-known for being able to speak Richard. So I guess that is why you have brought me in today.
KateYeah. Yeah. Richard probably had it at some point and. Oh, I should mention too, that Eric, it said he was going to join. Um, he said he was getting kind of patchy reception. Oh,
Ericcan you
Kateare you there?
Ericmake.
Mattoh, it's the conference thing. Hang on. Let
EricYeah. Um, no bars, no bar.
MattOh, there he is here. Oh, there is.
KateHe's just, he's gone.
MattUh, yeah, it looks like he dropped from the call. Okay. Well, I've got him set for auto answer. If he calls back
KateOkay. Great. Well, yeah, so we just need to find this number. Um, you know, we've used Google drive. We've used Dropbox. We've used paper. We wrote things on walls when Richard was here. Um, but the deadline is.
TheaI reached out to Chelsea since she's in the Iowa office. Really, really helpful for this. Um, but she is testing out her bunker in a, uh, post atomic age kind of situation. So she is going to be unreachable this week. So we don't unfortunately have an eye ally down in the Iowa office.
KateGod. Okay. I have a S I do feel like unfortunately, a backup option is going to be going straight to like the government themselves in Iowa and asking, um, what this is.
Mattoh, yeah. That's um, that shouldn't be too well, uh, during a holiday, it's going to be a problem.
Theaalso, um, Richard really pissed off. Like most of the IRS representatives in the state of Iowa. Um,
Kateno.
Theayeah, if I, I don't know if you remember, but, um, he had that really viral video of when he left. In fact, that's the reason why we decided to part ways with Richard after his, um, Viral stunt video that unfortunately resulted in the NSA being called to an IRS office.
MattDid not know that,
EricHey, can y'all hear me?
TheaYeah.
MattHey, there's air.
KateHey,
Ericwas able to tether to an internet cafe here. Uh, sorry. Uh, sorry for the July.
Kateare you on a dog?
EricYeah. Yeah. There's um, there's an internet cafe on, on the, by George, behind me. I've been just, uh, staying, stay in your there's. There's a storm coming in. So we, we haven't been able to ship out yet,
Kateokay. Cool. I
Ericworry about it. Uh, I got, I got some time.
Kateokay. Well, you know what we're looking for. You got my email about the Iowa.
EricYeah. Did you check Google drive Dropbox and the walls yet?
KateYeah, I mean, pretty much.
Mattyeah, I've I went, I went through and did a second pass, uh, just now on, uh, both the, the managed Dropbox and the old, uh, Metamarkets, Gmail, Dropbox, uh, the private Google drive, the managed Google drive, the secret Google. And the accidental Google drive. Um, I
EricOh, even the accidental one. Oh,
MattYeah, no. Um, here's my worry. So a lot of stuff that Richard did was just on the walls, uh, walls that of course we send painted over. Um, and we have not had any luck with the forensics team. We hired to pull that paint off. Um, But we do have a lot of photos, uh, from Richard's office mate, um, mostly candid, uh, ones that were posted to their Instagram. Obviously the ones that had very clear financial details on them, we've had them taken down since, um, but we've been going through the ones that we can find and OCR and them. Um, unfortunately that project is not very far along. Um, so there's kind of a pile of photos I could share with y'all.
EricWell, how many are there? I can't, I can't be too much for us to go through, right?
MattThe ones from the Instagram, there's a collection of 37.
EricYeah. Oh, that's that's reasonable. We could, we could, we could just look to them. Right.
Mattthe, uh, I mean, I've kind of already been through those, um, as part of setting up the OCR project. So.
Ericit.
Kateare all the numbers labeled though. I feel like Richard often would just write numbers on the wall and we wouldn't know what they were.
Mattthat's a fair point. Um, I was mostly using the results of the OCR software to decide whether there was something relevant in there. So if it was just a series of, well, what does an EIN.
Katein numbers. There were just a bunch of numbers. Okay.
MattYeah. Oh, actually, um, numbers are one of the easiest things to OCR. It's the first thing that they ever trained, optical character recognition to do cool stuff. If you ever want to look up the history of machine learning, um, okay.
Kateokay. Well look, so
MattHow many digits
Kateyeah, let's Google. How many digits are an
Mattin an Iowa AI yet? Um, let's see. State employer identification number is six, a six digit number with a three digit location code. Okay. But is that code also a number?
Ericwell, that, that location code has to be from where we set our office up. So we should be able to find, figure that part.
KateUm, okay. But remember, we didn't always start into Moines. There was that unincorporated county in Iowa that we thought would be better for, um,
EricYup.
Kateyou know, storage purposes and
TheaAre you talking about, are you talking about Elkhorn?
KateElkhorn. Yeah. I think that's what we call.
TheaYeah,
KateSo maybe we just never got issued a tax ID number because we were incorporated in an unincorporated area.
Mattoh, that's not great. Um, although,
TheaI think
Mattit sounds like you all remember where it was incorporated, so we could probably call their office.
Ericthey don't have an office
TheaYeah. I mean,
Mattdo you, can you incorporate a corporation in an unincorporated city? I don't think so.
EricWell, it happened. So.
Theayeah, it definitely happened. Um, we were very secretive about moving into Iowa because. Tensions, as I mentioned between Richard and people in Iowa. Um, so we never let Richard know where the office was located. Um,
Mattbut,
Ericgood idea.
Mattbut
Theayeah, I
Mattwas also the one who filed. He filed the registration for the business without knowing that well, then if Richard didn't know, then that must mean someone else did the business.
KateI remember now we had the, the coding system where everything related to Iowa, we had like a, you know, a kind of puzzle code to scramble all the numbers in a certain way. He wouldn't actually be able to, you know, divulge any information about our Iowa operations. We just have to find the, uh, the key,
TheaThe cipher. Yeah, we had a simple cipher.
MattWe have to find both the cipher and the ciphertext. I mean, if we don't know which of these seemingly random piles of numbers on the wall represents our Iowa EIN, then even with the key, we won't be able to, we can't just like decrypt a wall of a photograph. Oh boy. Um, are we sure we don't have any contact in that office from before Richard Stein maybe, or. The state
Erica second. Wait, wait. Remember Jen, when she was traveling to Iowa, she got violently ill. Remember that?
Theayeah, I do. I do.
Ericwe, do we have the health insurance documentation for when we sent her to the ER
TheaOh, that is a great, great question.
Katewe're really not supposed to be looking at employee health records. It's like
Mattwe don't necessarily need to
Ericwe had to pay, right? Yeah, We just had to pay our part of the coverage. Right.
Mattyeah. So whoever our healthcare provider in the state of Iowa is like, we've got a policy with them. They would register our employee ID number, or that's a great, uh, that's great.
Ericcorn health.org?
KateI don't, I don't know. Where did you find that information?
TheaWait, I'm sorry. That's our healthcare provider is Korn health.org.
Ericwell, we got a local provider because we were still setting up in, in different, uh, different places. And, you know, we didn't have, we didn't have enough employees to get a good rate with the national provider. So yeah.
KateRight?
Ericthe time that Jen was sent to the ER, it was, she was covered by Korn health.
MattI just want to, before anybody else goes, do not go to corn health.com.
EricIt's dot org. Yes.
Mattyou. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Uh, do not. Um, great. Okay. this whole thing is just a landing page to a phone number.
Ericticket they get bought maybe.
KateNo.
Ericphone number.
Kateno, that's, I mean, there are a healthcare provider. That's kind of the level of technology they're at
Mattwell,
Katehere. Let me see if it's, it's something we can text. Maybe it's like a, some type of mobile number. Um, I'll just shoot them a message and say,
EricI I'd call, but I, I can't.
KateYeah, you shouldn't call anyone from the dock, Eric.
MattEric. How long are you going to be out on the ocean? Is this like a day trip or are you
Ericuh, yeah, I'll be out there for six, seven days depending on, uh, whether yeah.
Mattpretty good. Are you fishing or just, I'm just seeing the sites.
EricUh, we'll do a little fishing and we'll do a little, a little scuba, a little diving, um,
Mattthat's great. Cathy. I've I forgot. Weren't you on a. Schedule we'll be on a retreat right now.
Theayes, I was scheduled to be on a retreat. Um, but unfortunately I gave Kate my emergency contact line, uh, to the retreat center. Um, as a place of trust, um, you know, um, but I am learning how to be more compassionate. And so here I am,
KateYes. Um,
Theato get the ninth Kali chakra for the Dalai Lama himself, but I am here in the stead.
Kateand helping us, you are, we are very thankful. Um, corn health is, has texted me back.
MattOh, great.
KateYeah. Um, they sent me like all of Jen's files. They just texted me. Pictures of pretty much all of her medical records?
MattWow. that cannot be HIPAA compliant.
EricAnd also, sorry, I, from what I heard from Jen or some,
MattOh no, there's not photos. And x-rays in there. Are there. Oh.
Katethere are definitely photos. Um, yeah, I D I don't think I realized the extent to which her injuries were. Um, but I might buy her also a couch for.
Ericyeah.
Theado you mind uploading those to the pain and sorrow Google drive? Uh, the creative team keeps.
KateI really think that's even more of a HIPAA violation that hadn't has already happened.
TheaI'm sorry, I just, uh, I just feel like, you know, I'm trying to build empathy with my team and that would really help to let people see how the sausage is made and, you know, the people who really could put themselves on the line for our organization.
EricI mean, Kate you're already seeing the images. Maybe you could just do like a reaction video to the
TheaYes. That would be really great.
Ericupload.
TheaOr just describe them in vivid detail. It could be a good storytelling exercise for you.
KateOkay. Okay.
EricAnyway, is, are there, are there any, any indications of the,
Mattyeah.
Ericstate EIN.
MattI just got a, a, a text that, that I could get on an earlier flight. So maybe we could look for the EIN first.
Katesure. Sure. Okay. So, um, I do see a number on here, which I think is close. Uh, It, the problem is it's sort of handwritten. Um, I guess they don't use any sort of computer records and it's, you know, a doctor's handwriting. So let me just go through them, let me list them out and then we'll figure it out together.
MattSure.
KateThe first one is either a C E B or three.
MattWow. That's a lot of possibilities. Okay.
KateThe second one is either an L I or, or dash, you know, like how you have
MattWow. I really thought you were going to say a one. Um, okay. A
KateNo, it's definitely not a one.
MattOkay.
KateThere's a little arrow that someone pointed to it in a rope, not
EricNot a one. Oh,
MattOh, wow.
KateUm, Okay, the next one is either a oh, or a zero or an E or a B.
TheaOkay. Um, Kate, you said that, I mean, I know that, um, there are multiple medical records there. Is there any way that we could compare them together to, to maybe get some clues
KateOoh. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I'm just going to delete the ones that have the pictures in them. Um, I'm going to, there was actually four pages that each have the medical record written on them. So the EIN number, I mean,
TheaHas anybody fed the office cat? Cause this cat is going nuts.
Mattno, no. I thought we had building staff to do that.
Kateyeah.
TheaI don't know. I mean, Kate.
Katefor the holidays?
MattOh, yikes.
TheaOkay.
KateGot the cat's been neglected.
TheaOkay. I'm I'm it's all right. I'll make sure I feed her before I leave. Yeah.
Ericyou're going to use the cat food in the refrigerator, right?
TheaYeah, of course. Um,
Katecat food at the refrigerator.
Theayeah.
KateIs it the things that look kind of like little jerky balls?
EricYeah,
TheaThey're in the, they're in the little, like a glass Mason jars.
Mattthey're specially made
Ericreally nice.
TheaYeah.
Katebeen giving those to guests. I won't do that anymore. Um, okay.
Mattit's technically food grade.
KateOkay.
EricTh the numbers, the numbers.
KateThe numbers, I'm texting you all each a different image. Okay. We're just going to go through together. And then like at the same time, we'll say the number or letter we think each one is. And then, you know, if we come to a majority without influencing each other, you know, then that's probably what it is. Right.
MattOkay. I
Katealready gone through the first three. Did everyone get their dog?
Theaoh God.
MattUm,
Erica little low Rez on two G.
Theayou included the photo in this one and
EricOh, yep.
Theawhy we can't share that with the larger team. Oh, wow.
Katecan put right to that.
TheaI didn't even know a bone could break like that.
EricOh my
KateOh, Jen has a special types of bones. Okay. Just. Let's start with the fourth
Ericnumbers. Yes.
Katethe numbers or letters. We don't know what they are. Okay. So I've done the first three, everyone identify your fourth and then we'll just say what we think it is at the same time. Mm
Mattto drop this into a captcha solver
EricOh, no.
Mattbecause those are great at reading all kinds of squiggly letters and numbers.
KateOkay. This is like our own personal capture sulfur. Um, Is everyone ready?
TheaYes.
MattOkay. Yes.
Kate3, 2, 1 Z.
TheaOkay.
MattOkay. I just, do you just want to back up, um, the Iowa state documentation says that the number we're looking for is six.
Ericyeah. Oh, it says
Mattdash followed by three digits. Yeah. So now we're looking for numbers.
EricOkay. All right.
MattHopefully that changes some things.
KateI
TheaI,
Kateso you look like twos. I'm going to say.
TheaI'm gonna say a nine.
Mattokay. So we've got two fours, a nine and a two at nines and fours look real close. Would you be willing to be swayed towards.
TheaYeah. I could be swayed for.
KateI can't believe this is how we're doing this guys. We get this number wrong. We have so many penalties. Uh,
EricCan we like check it. So like a verification site,
MattI mean,
Ericthere's gotta be only like
MattYeah. Every, every state maintains a business registry and you can usually look up an employer by their, uh, EIN. So we can, we can go through this process. We'll come up with a list of probably no more than a dozen or two potentials, and we can just punch them in and see which one is actually us.
Kateokay. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Let's just do the others quickly. So we've got the fourth one. Let's do the fifth one, uh, 3, 2, 1 0, Calvin.
TheaI'm sorry. I'm pretty sure this is in the infinity sign.
KateNumber.
TheaI know. I'm just saying what I've seen. Okay. I'm pretty sure it's either an omega or an Infiniti.
KateOh my God.
TheaIt's not a number,
EricOkay, so three or three or five then,
Theaboth of those. I mean, it's like two circles like this together.
KateWe know what that looks like.
TheaI just don't know what other number this looks like.
MattI'm going to yet, I'm going to write that
TheaOh, to eight, like this, like.
EricAlright, one more, one more.
KateOkay, one more time with the first ones. Okay. 3, 2, 1.
TheaI said, I said, too, it's a real number then I'm still not convinced. I'm not convinced. The last number was not an infinity side.
MattOkay.
Katelet's just
Theamaybe they're progressive in the Iowa.
Ericand you're just countable and uncountable infinities, and they're in there, their databases.
TheaI don't know, Richard was always trying to move them farther to the left, you know, maybe succeeded at a small.
EricOkay.
MattOkay. Let's see I'm on iowa.gov. Um, what's do business entities and we're going to do a search by business number. Um, great. So I'll just start typing these in. I'm going to guess that's a three, a one, a zero four. We'll start with three there. Uh, one. Okay. Um, Nope. That's, that's not it. Uh, it's an inactive business. As of 2005,
KateWhat's his name.
Mattum, uh, uh, via to auto LLC.
KateOkay.
MattThat's, uh, that's what that messed on us. Okay. So, um, all right. If we like the three, um, I'm still just collapsing the LDI and the dash. Those have to be a one, a zero. So then next, next change would be a seven.
Katenot a one
MattYeah. I don't know.
Katea number.
Mattshould we just take it out if we take that out? We still, oh yeah, we have. How did we get to seven digits? We have seven digits out
EricWhoa.
Mattout of an initial six
TheaMaybe the infinity was choose
Erictwo zeroes.
Matttwo zeros. Okay. So then that gives us zero, zero. Now that's still, now, now we're just way off.
Katejust add
MattBut if I put the one back.
Ericthe, the one, uh, the one is a, is an errant stroke. It's a, not a one. It ignore it.
MattI put it back then that gets us to nine digits.
EricOh,
KateTry it. I don't know. Just try
Mattlet's see what we got. All right. Um,
EricWe should do an escape room
Mattoh wow. They're giving me a capture. Uh, and then an unusually large number of page visits has been detected.
EricSure. Well, that's fair.
Katedon't tell me if the captured is wet nine numbers or something.
Mattoh, wow. They're making me do it a second time. Okay. Um,
Erichave to find the, the boats in the, in the picture?
Mattwow. Um, uh, no, I just keep clicking the I'm not a robot button and continue and they keep sending me back. I,
Katewhat if we use these pictures as our capture in our product?
MattJen's medical.
KateNo, no pictures of the pictures of the numbers,
MattOh, gosh, I mean, we could do that, but that would be so many people that would have to sign up in order to solve them.
KateWe're having kind of a big new year's rush. Yeah.
MattAll right. Let me open this in
TheaParticularly they would be identifying. So like where's the bone in the photo.
Ericthe numbers not the,
KateWe're not sending medical pictures as the cap shot. It's the picture of the handwritten numbers
Ericwe do need a country.
TheaOh yeah.
KateOh, yeah. Cause I guess encapture, you need to know if they did it right. Uh, well, Matt, how long do you think it'll take you to punch in the options we've come up with so far.
MattI mean, it really depends on when and for how long the website lets me back on. Let me see if I can do an incognito window.
Ericoh, nice. It's a government site. It's probably not.
MattYeah, probably not too sophisticated. Um, I can't I drag this window. Um,
KateWait, does it say copyright 2004 on the bottom of this website? Oh God.
MattOh, yeah, it sure does. Wait, hang on. Um, y'all were going to feel really stupid. Uh, the business entity search page also has a search by name.
KateI know our name,
EricOh, wow.
MattSo let's just met at Marquette.
KateMetta Metta, mark. It. You might want to add in,
MattOh, no results.
KateYeah. Yeah. So that probably
Theait might've been, it might've been the cipher.
KateYeah.
MattThe what? Oh, the cipher to keep Richard from.
KateYeah. Ciphered our name?
TheaI'm sorry, I'm just laughing. Cause I've just been here so long. Oh, all. Um, no Richard, Dave, see, I'm a Richard speaker. Um, yeah, Richard did have a cipher that he use edits possible. Sometimes Richard got some things Crossy wise that he used the cipher name instead of the real name. I don't remember the cipher, but I do know the last thing Richard said to Chelsea is this isn't a wild goose chase. If you go to the place where you can find it, finally, you see your own face.
Mattokay. So like a mirror
TheaMaybe that's it. The ciphers mirror.
KateMirror, maybe it's you're supposed to mirror.
MattR a M E T a M tech rum atom. I'm going to be very upset if this is the bid. There. There it is.
Ericmy God.
TheaOh, we did it.
MattThere it is. Okay. Wait, let's just, uh, here, let me put it on the tablet and pass this around. Can, can y'all verify, is that the address where we registered the company? Is this us.
TheaYeah, that's us.
MattOkay, well that we're going to, we're going to have to file another DBA. Uh, so they know we're doing business as Metro market, but it's great that we found ourselves.
Katewell, I was gonna say, I mean, I know we're going to talk about like our name change next time, but have we thought about tech from Adam?
EricNo.
MattYeah, I don't, I don't think it works tech room atom. I mean, how. I don't know, you know, sounds like a thing for Kathy and her team. Um,
EricAnd let me, let me, let me think on it.
MattI'm just going to say yes to this rebooking and, um, yes, to this lift and I'm going to get back on our way, so good job
Kateget outta here. I'll hold down the Fort in the office.
EricOkay.
MattKate. You're not going on vacation.
EricYeah. What
KateNow it's like being alone here. It's like a mini vacation. It's like a state case.
Matthang on. I distinctly remember you putting vacation on your to-do list.
TheaYeah. And, and,
KateYeah. I have no meetings today. It's just me and the office and my vacation to do list.
Theaand why hasn't the captain?
KateI forgot to move that from the office to do a list of the vacation, to do
Mattkind of mean.
KateOkay. I'm sorry about that.
Mattthe key take care of yourself. Okay. Please take some time off.
TheaW we talked about self care. You should take some time for self.
EricGood to take a break.
Mattoh, okay.
KateEric's gone.
MattYeah. We'll just
Kateall right, well, we're, we're good. Just, uh, now I have that number. I'll do the rest of the Texas. Um, and. See you all next week.
MattOkay, everybody take care.
KateI
BenThis 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 thevalgarris eric has played by Barry wright 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 Mcguire 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 Robyn Stegman Robyn 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 rsteggy thank you for listening.