Two Seattle-area CEOs, billing themselves as “startup rappers,” have released an anthem aimed at the region’s entrepreneurs to inspire them to “dream big and never give up.” While we encourage the tech community to think outside the box when it comes to attracting funding and so forth, we’d like these guys to actually give up … on the rapping.
The song, which is a parody of “Ni**as in Paris” by Jay-Z and Kanye West, comes from the minds of Gabriel Gervelis and Manish Gaudi as a “gift to the startup community!” Um, thanks?
Gervelis is the CEO of New Audience Media and Gaudi is founder and CEO at AME Commerce.
“So I dream so big VCs gonna fund me / But first they gotta find me,” the song starts. From there, it’s about 3 1/2 minutes of us hoping that no one from the HBO comedy “Silicon Valley” has access to Vimeo, because all we can hear is Gilfoyle’s cruel, cruel critique.
While the song does its job of name-dropping — Jeff Bezos, Madrona, Tableau, etc. — and offers words of encouragement for wannabe entrepreneurs, it gets a bit painful in matching up some of the original song’s lyrical twists with a message aimed at startup riches:
“What’s the equity playa? / How’s the vesting my killa? / Where’s my cash my banka? / Where’s my term sheet my lawya?”
“VCs say I’m the illest cause my dreams are the realest / Got my funding in Seatown and we going for millions.”
Whether you like big butts or thrift shopping, Seattle is certainly used to attracting both critical praise and cringe-worthy attention when it comes to its rap game. Here’s to the days when it was about a posse rather than profits on Broadway.
