(This post is the sixth in a series; see also Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, Track 4, Track 5)
We’ve cheated on this track by creating an ad-hoc medley, but it was necessary in order to allow the great Tom Waits to provide bookends for the startup experience in one tidy package.
What’s He Building? provides a spoken-word narrative of a startup in stealth mode (work with me, here), from the perspective of a curious and apprehensive world which fears anything different — and definitely anything new. We hope neither your competitors nor your customers are quite as creepy as the narrator, though.
(Excerpt)
What’s he building in there?
What the hell is he building in there?
He has subscriptions to those magazines
He never waves when he goes by
He’s hiding something from the rest of us
He’s all to himself
I think I know why…
On the other hand, How’s It Gonna End, from the masterpiece Real Gone, speaks of any startup’s natural obsession with the exit strategy (again, work with me).
(Chorus)
I want to know the same thing
Everyone wants to know
How’s it going to end?
These two pieces describe the arc of a startup’s life, from creation to liquidation. However, we wouldn’t really recommend patterning the middle of the story after any Tom Waits songs, as that’s not likely to work out so well.