Aug 12, 2022

Dear colleagues, I wanted to reach out to you today to talk about the BeReal app (yes, I know what that is — I have teenage kids and a life outside of work, unlike the rest of you, who are working more hours than me and yet aren’t eligible for company dental insurance.) As you know, we pride ourselves on cultivating a fun, energetic and burnt out fast-paced company culture. Remember how we used to have a pool table, a Nintendo 64, and Soylent on tap? Well, maybe you don’t since you all voted to never return to the office after the pandemic, so we broke our lease and sold everything (I did keep one of our meditation chambers, though. Unfortunately, the extra Soylent expired). Anyway, I saw a post on LinkedIn this week (no, not that one ) from an old buddy of mine — we were on the squash team together at Dartmouth and Choate, just like both of our fathers. Dave is an analyst at Goldman now, and he said that his summer intern tipped him off on some secret data from Morgan Stanley! How did she find out? Apparently, her friend posted it on BeReal! She took a selfie at her desk, but on the other side of the camera, right on her laptop, there it was… Trade secrets, just out in the open, ready for anyone to steal. Good on his intern, though — I’d hire her if he doesn’t! (So long as she doesn’t need dental coverage.) I did a search on Bing and found this article from The Information about the same thing! I didn’t read the article, since I don’t believe in paying for good journalism. But I did find this TikTok that really sealed the deal, and of course, everything you see on TikTok is factually accurate. which is bullshit . Sometimes, whether I like it or not, the daily BeReal notification will hit during the work day. And even though you can totally just wait until after work to BeReal and no one will care, I get it — you want to snap that selfie at your desk and get right back to work. Please BeCareful while you BeReal! As you make sure that your selfie on your front-facing camera is picture-perfect, take a look at what you’re posting from the back-facing camera, too. For example, if I were to have taken a selfie at my desk earlier, I might have accidentally leaked a spreadsheet with engineers’ salary information, and if you zoomed in closely on the image, you’d be able to see that men make $50,000 more than women with the same job title at our company. Of course, I would never want any of you to find out about that — what a PR nightmare. Anyway, add me on BeReal! bere.al/venture-capital-is-ethical Your