The #NaturalMinds logo and branding presentation was a slick video, beginning with brains. Brains are like clouds, the narrator intoned, and soon the brains were floating in a summer sky, and spreading out like clouds, and they started to darken. Cloud brains lead to action, the narrator contiued, and the sky became very dark indeed. Suddenly, there was a two bright flashes, and, there it was! The new company logo!
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Lesser #NaturalMinds company nobility were in the downstairs conference room, Winterfeld. Poor heating in the hanger gaurenteed the room was always cold. The mass of employees got to watch a remote video feed from their cubes. For some reason, SV companies like using video conferencing for all group meetings, for sprint planning, etc, even when everyone is in the same building.
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Soon after the opening of the #NaturalMinds office it was time for the great reveal. What does spending a million on branding SV style buy you these days? The board was gathered in the board room on kings landing for the presentation, along with Roger Wilco, and the branding people. The prince was on a special remote hookup there, too.
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Being the Ides of march I remember Caesar. No, not that Caesar, This was when I was an engineering manager at a rather well funded #SiliconValley startup, and this Caesar became the work mascot. We had 2 floors from a converted television studio in a "first class" hotel. There were rats, but Caesar was a giant cockroach that showed up one day. Caesar was the best of us, too ;). The real truth about SV is even worse than #NaturalMinds may suggest.

Other amenties of the #NaturalMinds office included a fully stocked bourbon bar, as many #SiliconValley companies seem to believe drinking at work improves creativity, and a dorm, because this is not something Elon invented, but had long been part of SV startup culture. It would be a few months before a shower was added, so for now the dirty dozen remained dirty.
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All along the hanger wall of the new #NaturalMinds office was converted into two decks of glass enclosed individual offices for the more privileged employees, and conference rooms. So true to #SiliconValley aesthetics. The boardroom, at the head of a golden spiral staircase and with its majestic view of the galley of cubes below became known as Kings Landing. Another important conference room we will hear more about later became known as the Eyrie.
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It was time for #NaturalMinds to move into the new office. By cutting some corners, it was made ready in 6 months, and revealed all the design creativity of SV. Yes, a bunch of cubicals clustered together in the center of a hanger. Sure it was drafty. The skylights the board insisted upon leaked when it rained. But there was more...
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Long before a product is ready for actual use, a SV startup puts their service, in whatever crappy state it is initially online, believing in #agile and that they can iterate their way to quality with no plan at all. With that in mind, #NaturalMinds went online right after moving into the parking garage. The dirty dozen would eventually take shifts piloting the first user queries.
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@yogthos in fact, that is one of the points I intend to highlight in the #NaturalMinds story, too. @ewdocparris

As to why they were the dirty dozen, #SV startups have often found engineers that are paid too poorly to actually live like human beings. Some might live in a car in a Walmart or at the local YMCA. We had so much space at #NaturalMinds we could setup a dorm, which is a practice done by #SiliconValley creaps long before Elon. But a shower stall? That would come much later, and hence why they were the dirty dozen.
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Because the #SV #VentureCapitalist mind-set disfavors remote work, and because the prince insisted we run #NaturalMinds engineering like a scif, we had to hire people both desperate and cheap enough to travel across country to be poorly paid for a 3 to 6 month contract. They didn't all come from prisons, but in #SiliconValley there are recruiting firms that specialize in such labor abuse.

Besides the built-in cockpit toilet to improve uptime, at #NaturalMinds we needed to train our human pilots to deliver wrong answers quickly to effectively compete with #AI and this is something I am sure @lowqualityfacts would understand, too. To make this vision come true we hired a typical #SV style engineering team thru recruiters. They became known as our dirty dozen.

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How hard could branding be for a typical #SV startup like #NaturalMinds you may ask. Well over $1 million dollars and more than 6 months were spent, and much of it before Roger Wilco gained control of it. The work of these branding experts was kept as the biggest secret since D-day, until the big reveal at the new office. Given the time and effort one might expect something amazing...
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For those wondering if the #NaturalMinds board is too unbelievable, or an otherwise impossible exaggeration, I did base it on a real and typical then new VC funded #SiliconValley startup board that had Gilman Louie, Richard Clarke, Ambassador DiTrani, and Putin's personal banker all on it working together, as well as Erik Prince as their secret board member. This series is, if anything, an understatement of the reality of the #SV cult.
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@ewdocparris

For a typical #SiliconValley startup like #NaturalMinds the c-suite naturally and badly reflected, like in a kinda broken mirror, the already existing rivalries and flaws of the #SV board that hired them, with the inevitable consequences this produces. Well funded and stocked early with employees, NaturalMinds own version of #GameOfThrones began well before the hanger was even ready to move into.
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Not all #SiliconValley boards are composed exclusively of degenerates. #NaturalMinds had an exceptional early board member, too. Always honorable, Maromoto san had been a deputy Japanese intel minister, and served on the board of Matushita Electric, too. His Yakuza connections were merely rumored.
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Another important hire by the board of #NaturalMinds was the vp of marketing. Typically a #SV board would seek real sleaze for this, and so very naturally our board hit pay-dirt, in an ex-Avaya market manager out on parole, Roger Wilco. All the sleaziest market managers are in US Telcom companies.
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During this time in #NaturalMinds I was kept busy developing the cockpit; where the natural mind would sit, receive, and reply to internet queries. To maximize uptime we integrated a toilet and food tray, too. The dream was finally coming together, #SV style!
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With all that space, and that big bingo 2nd round, naturally it was time to splurge on hiring. But there was a catch. It would take 6 months to renovate the hanger. So the contractors moved us temporarily into a nearby parking garage as #NaturalMinds naturally grew over those months to over 100 people, too.
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With #NaturalMinds 2nd round came the chance to hire, and to lease office space. The attic was a bit crowded. Naturally, with someone like Pompeo on the board, many possibilities opened. Including leasing an unused hanger at Moffett field. As Gary, the new chief scientist the board hired, with a doctorate in agriculture but no experience in #ai and no clear natural intelligence either, kept saying "it's a fucking airplane hanger, how cool is that?"
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