My Main Goal as CEO of This Startup Is to Get Featured in a Documentary About How I Was Conning Everyone

Hi, Mr. Shephard! Thanks for coming to meet me here at GimBar’s revolutionary headquarters. I’m so thrilled that you’re thinking of investing in my company, but I heard you still had some questions.

My goals? That’s easy. I really only have two. The first is to turn GimBar into the best company ever. The second is to be featured in a compelling documentary a few years from now about how I was basically just conning everyone this whole time. Any other questions?

Ah, you want to hear more about the second goal. Understandable. So here’s how I see it: starting a bad company that fails is pretty easy. But starting a company that fails so spectacularly that the streaming services start putting camera crews together even before the official bankruptcy filing, and also its downfall symbolizes something important about technology or The Way Millennials Live Now or whatever? Now that’s immortality. And if we can somehow get Netflix and Hulu to release their documentaries on the same day, even better. That’s how I’ll know I’ve truly succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

Or failed beyond my wildest dreams. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

And just to be clear, when I say immortality, I’m talking about immortality for both of us, which I assume is a major concern of yours, given how much you’ve previously invested in cryonics. A charlatan is nothing without his enablers, after all, and I’m offering you the chance to be the biggest enabler of them all. I’m sure being a billionaire is fun, but it’s nothing compared to the rush you’ll feel when a Harvard Business School professor explains on camera how he now refers to hubristic investments as “Shephardian” in his classroom.

By the way, cryonics is totally something GimBar could pretend to be revolutionizing if that would make it easier for you to invest. I had been planning to focus on something involving glockenspiels just because that also starts with a “g,” but I am very, very flexible on this. As long as the product is something that can serve as a metaphor for a generation’s need to connect and something that will look good while a camera slowly pans over stills of it with ominous music swelling in the background, I’m down.

So, what do you say? Are you in? Because I’d love to announce your investment at our next Company Collaboration. Have you seen one of those before? I basically just put on an outfit meant to evoke Leonardo da Vinci and talk on stage in front of all my employees about how GimBar is the greatest company in the world and will never, ever fail. They’re all filmed and posted on YouTube to ensure the documentary will be absolutely jam-packed with scenes that evoke dramatic irony. I also call them “collaborations” instead of “meetings” because that seems like a good thing for one of the rank and file GimBar employees the documentarians interview to wryly bring up as a microcosm of how everyone at the company slavishly catered to my eccentric leadership style.

Now, how large can we expect your investment to be? Oh, you still have some questions? Well, OK, shoot.

Why don’t I actually try to make this company a genuine success and then hope someone decides to make a documentary about how much we’ve achieved under my leadership? Hmm.

You know, now that I think about it, I’m actually not sure we’re a good fit for each other. But thanks a lot for stopping by, and if any of your wealthy friends have a better understanding than you do of what it takes to stand out in the documentary world these days, please send them my way.