Your Charismatic CEO Welcomes You To Q4
Right now is such an exciting moment for Footsie.
Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome to our Q4 All-Hands meeting, and an especially warm welcome to those far-flung employees joining us via Ziggity-Zagz remote conferencing. Right now is such an exciting moment for Footsie. With our IPO next month expected to debut at a valuation of upwards of thirty chamillion dollars, we are charging headfirst together into a very profitable future. But, more importantly, we are changing the world.
You know, when I first had the idea of creating a fabric-based barrier to protect users’ feet from their shoes, there were people who said to me, “Chris, that’s socks. You invented socks.” But Footsie is so much more than that. It’s about community, building genuine connections between footwear users across the globe; using our patented Size-U-Up sole measurement system to give every user a fully customized product designed to satisfy their every fabric-barrier-from-shoes need; and integrating innovative technology to synchronize each Footsie with users’ phones to collect valuable data that can then be sold to our corporate partners. We have totally disrupted the sock sector in ways that brands like Hanes can only imagine. And now look at us! With over one hundred gazillion units sold, only forty gazillion of which were bought by my fiancée’s dad, and with exciting new offshoots of the Footsie brand that help our users thrive and live their best lives, we are poised to go public at a number that is almost too good to be true. But don’t worry. It’s not! Trust me.
And all of this growth? It’s because of you. Our amazing design team, who came up with the Validation option, which gently squeezes the user’s ankle and tells them how much they are loved, how beautiful and smart and special they are. The engineering team, who wrote the algorithm that calculates when users are being lazy and fat-shames them into walking via Push notification. And, of course, our stellar marketing team, who came up with the super-synergistic side app Playing Footsie, which locates single and ethically non-monogamous Footsie users in your area. A lot of love stories have originated with us.
Now, I know that some of you have expressed concerns lately, especially after that exposé that highlighted the fact that my previous three startups failed spectacularly, and which described me, quite unfairly, as a “self-deluded, entitled Messiah figure running on personality alone.” But I ask you, why is it that when someone who’s not a white male has big dreams, it’s called ambition, but when I have them, it’s suddenly “entitlement?” Aren’t I — we — all entitled to as much joy and success as anyone else?
There’s also been some nervousness after I had to lay off those four hundred employees when our last round of funding didn’t come through. And I want you to know that I hear you. I get it. But I promise you, there’s nothing to worry about. Just because I had to tighten the old company belt a little doesn’t mean the fun will stop here at Footsie. My vow to you is that, as long as these doors are open, you will always have your ping-pong table, organic snacks, beer tap, LaCroix tap, kombucha tap, video games, catered meals, improv classes, Whiskey Wednesdays, Concert Fridays, morning yoga, evening massages, Laser Tag den, sound-deprivation chamber, private movie theater, puppy snuggles pen, and, of course, our annual company retreat to the moon in Q1. We’re actually doing fine financially. Really. I wouldn’t have made the company buy me that private jet if we weren’t, would I?
So let us go boldly into this future together. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Don’t listen to warnings that say this is a wild overinflation, a bubble about to burst, that our steady and dramatic losses over the last two years signal inevitable disaster ahead. Don’t ever let anyone tell you your success is a fabrication of a megalomaniac out to enrich only himself. We’re all about to be jawillionaires! We just need one final round of funding to get us over the finish line. So, if you’ll excuse me, the private jet awaits.
Jenna-Marie Warnecke is a writer in New York. Her fiction and essays have appeared in places like Narratively, F(r)iction, and Tahoma Literary Review. Find her on Twitter: @JennaWarnecke
