Thanksgiving 2008 (with a nod to Stanley Bing)

Dear Shareholders,

This year we have many things to be thankful for, not the least of which is our hard earned capital in the bank raised just weeks before the crisis. Thank god we aren’t raising money now or we’d be stuck in deep do-do trying to sell our wildly optimistic (some might say delusional) Web 2.0 business model. If you think we have any chance of making money in this lifetime, well let’s just say you guys must still believe in Santa Claus. (Hell, after our first round I believed Santa had relocated to Sand Hill Road.)

I guess now is the time to let you in on the “real” plan. We never planned on building this thing. What we’ve always wanted to do was to raise money from saps – whoops, I mean nice guys – like yourselves – and then flip this sucker to Google or … well, to Google, anyway.

I am very thankful that I’m not Jerry Yang, who, when he was offered a nice piece of change from Microsoft, turned it down even though he had no real business strategy after 392 days as Chief Yahoo and employees were jumping ship faster than I can say “free beer in the lobby.” If Mr. Schmidt comes knocking on our door with money in hand – as I pray he will – you can be sure I will take it.

Now, to my fellow entrepreneurs who are busy raising money, I want you to know that I feel your pain. If only I could share some of that $25 million we recently put in the bank. Some of our investors – now that I’ve let them in on the real plan – might want us to do just that. Although I’m generous with my sympathy I’m a little less so with my money. I mean think of how hard I worked on my story (an epic worthy of the greatest storytellers in history like Homer, Steve Jobs, and P.T. Barnum) to get all that cash.

On a final note, I want to thank our employees, whose dedication to our cause is nothing short of incredulous – I mean, incredible – and we appreciate that you were willing to take a 10% salary cut in order to stay. We firmly believe that despite the public market comps, we will be worth a whole lot more in the not too distant future. Some would say there’s nothing but upside for us. I believe that 2013 is looking like a really great year.

Dear friends, this year has had its challenges and while many VC’s are already calling 2009 a “write off” year, we remain optimistic. We look forward to welcoming Jerry Yang’s replacement. We think our two companies could benefit from working together. They have a service and we have proven ourselves experts at marketing. I can only hope the new CEO is as much of a Yahoo as the old one was.

Happy Thanksgiving.