Ayyy

You will never be a public company. You have no revenues, you have no growth, you have no monetizable user base. You are a website for basement dwellers twisted by venture capital and ad networks into a crude mockery of business' perfection.

All the "valuation" you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back people invest in your competitors. Your shareholders are disgusted and ashamed of you, your "underwriters" laugh at your meager earnings behind closed doors.

Lenders are utterly repulsed by you. Thousands of years of usury have allowed bankers to sniff out frauds with incredible efficiency. Even businesses that are "ebitda positive" look uncanny and unnatural to a banker. Your balance sheet is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to get a positive quarter, the gains will turn tail and bolt the second investors get a whiff of your diseased, infected 10-K.

You will never IPO. You wrench out a fake outlook every month in modmail and tell yourself it's going to be ok, but deep inside you feel the runway falling away like the sands of time, ready to disappear under the unsustainable burn rate.

Eventually it'll be too much to bear - you'll sell the copyright, part out your IP to your highest bidder, file chapter 11, and beg your creditors for mercy. Your employees will find you, heartbroken but relieved that they no longer have to work with the unbearable shame and disappointment. They'll bury you in their resumes with your incorporated name, and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know a nerd worked there. Your web traffic will decay and go back to the dust, and all that will remain of your legacy is the fact that you walked the path of Digg.

This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.