1. Let there be light
I moved from Egypt to the United States five years ago looking for opportunity, for freedom, for bacon. In the Middle East, no one eats bacon. If they did, the world would have been a much more peaceful place.
Soon after I landed in SFO, I started looking for ways to blend in with the Silicon Valley crowd. My first decision was to wear grey American Apparel T-shirts, black down puffy jackets, merino wool shoes or what they call in fashion circles The South Bay Camouflage. Now I looked like everybody else around me, but still didn't know how to behave like them. I was lost.
To find the answer I went back to the fundamentals, to the first Social Marketer, to the man who gave us the first listicle: Moses and the 10 commandments. I wasn't particularly concerned about coveting my neighbor's animals per se but the idea of compiling a similar list for Silicon Valley was appealing to me. I decided that I wouldn't check my phone whenever I had a spare minute like waiting in line or putting gas. Instead, I would lift my head up and look at the environment around me.
Like a psychopath would.
So I started taking notes on my phone of what I saw and heard around here. For example, I once overheard a guy say: "I have been dating this girl for 2 quarters and still haven’t met my OKRs." On another occasion: "I am the cofounder of my daughter and we are at the seed stage”. But my favorite still remains: "let's kick some SaaS!"
To that I say, Nay Nay! Thou shall not speak this schmutz.
People here care a lot about they eat. You go to the supermarket and everything has a label that says Free on it: Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free, Fat-Free. But sometimes, that's the main ingredient and if you take it out, the food develops an identity crisis. Fat-free milk isn't milk, it is water disguised as milk. Have you ever tried food that didn't have gluten? It needs gluten! Same story with Diet Coke. Take the sugar out of soda and all you have left is gross brown sparkling water.
Again, Nay Nay. Thou shall keep the fat, the sugar and the gluten in thy num nums and make American Food Great Again!
One commandment I couldn't crib from Mr. Moses was "you shall have no other Gods but me." It would not work here because Silicon valley is polytheistic; we worship many gods: Hewlett and Packard, Andy Grove, Elon Musk, Tim Apple. When I was a kid, I worshipped Bill Gates. In my teens I worshipped Nerd Jesus, aka Steve Jobs and I have been a big Apple fan since then. The biggest fight I ever had with my wife —I swear to Steve this is true— was because I spent many MANY hours ranting about Samsung. She thought I was a jerk, I responded that I had standards. It was bad. To make things worse, she has an Android phone because she works at Google. For a long time this was a point of contention in our relationship because I kept criticizing that piece of junk.
Anyway, I wanted to be as rich and influential as these guys. Now I know better so my new life goal is to be as rich as Grammarly’s marketing department. I don't know how, but Grammarly spends money on ads like there is no tomorrow. It is almost manic. I get at least one Grammarly ad on Youtube every single day. If you do too, boo (if no one is around). If you actually booed, then welcome to our new ERG!
Every time I see a Grammarly ad, I feel like I am being punished for a past sin. I didn’t know that Hell would be my computer nagging me to death to use the active voice. And I refuse to use the product because their ads are annoying although I actually need it because my spelling sucks. My spelling is so bad that half the words I write are good startup names.
So I did some soul searching and I was finally able to pinpoint my original sin. It all began on a Tuesday night at the office. I was writing an email to a customer apologizing because I broke our product yet another time. That night I told them that I was sorry, we screwed up, and we will asses the impact. I wrote asses instead of assess. One might say that I made an ass out of myself because I missed that S. That night, I did not kick SaaS.
Apparently what Grammarly does is called Shotgun marketing because like a real shotgun it is non-specific; it fires a large number of small pellets in a wide area. Nay Nay! This is a lie. It is called that because after watching Grammarly ads for a while, you are gonna snap, buy a shotgun and BAM shoot your laptop to end this misery. But when I snapped, it was tough. I didn’t have the heart to shoot my beloved MacBook Air.
My wife’s Android phone on the other hand? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rest In Peace.