It’s not a bubble until startups are rapping for seed funding. Mick Hagen, the founder of Undrip, a stealthy startup in San Francisco that is building a service to better filter your Twitter stream, is trying to get the attention of top angel investors with the rap video above. (Is it really that hard to get a meeting with investors these days?)
The video doesn’t say anything about what the startup does other than it’s the “biggest move I’ve made since I dropped outta Princeton” and we’ll be crushin it from NDA to IPO.” They are already “lookin for the future exit strategies” even though they have yet to launch a product. The chorus, which I do admit is catchy, goes, “We need a angel, We need a ride.” (Full lyrics below). There is even a red sports car.
It’s all about getting noticed, of course, in an overfunded environment. And if this video doesn’t work, they have 20 more addressed to individual super seed investors. Ron Conway, the first one should be in your inbox soon (see below—the production quality isn’t quite up to the $4,000 spent on the main video above, but it is personalized). Other investors who can be expecting a personalized pitch in rap form include Ashton Kutcher, Dave McClure, Michael Arrington, Keith Rabois, Kevin Rose, Chris Sacca, and Sean Parker.
Before you completely dismiss Undrip, Hagen was involved as a co-founder of Zinch, a college admissions matching service, which was sold to Chegg. And at least they are tackling a real problem. Filtering the realtime Twitter stream is something nobody has yet cracked in a satisfying way. If their product is half as slick as their video, it might do okay.
Here are the lyrics:
Verse 1:
Yo this is Undrip baby, comin hot out the kitchen
It’s Mick on the Mic, so you might wanna listen
Bout to knock the socks off the competition
Biggest move I’ve made since I dropped outta Princeton
I don’t play games like a politician
Wouldn’t be here without a value proposition
Ambition doesn’t get an intermission
So I’m swingin for the fences like I did with Zinch and
Inch by inch, row by row
I’m gonna make this business grow
All I need is that seed round dough
and the flow from my Undrip fount – Say Word
Uh yes yes y’all, we’re Thus Fresh y’all
A cut above above the rest, obsessed with success y’all
You know I don’t sleep, Cuz it really ain’t RESTful
I’m always on my grind like a mortar and pestle
Chorus:
We need a angel, We need a ride
We need a bump, a bump so we fly
We’re gonna make that money off of social steam
But we need your help to reach the dream
We need a angel, We need a ride
We need a bump a bump so we fly
Undrip is about to go
We just need an angel to unlock the flow
Verse 2:
Comin straight outta Soma, the valley of silicone
In the zone, writing code til we see the break of dawn
Learning the ropes from the CEO
And we’ll be crushin it from NDA to IPO
Here we go again, yeah it’s back to bootstrap
A lot of young companies do dat do dat
You see these other suckas and they moving at a turtle pace
But check the way we run it when we jump over your burn rate
New York never sleeps, well that may be
But we never sleep either, cuz we workin on them qwerty keys
Lookin for the future exit strategies
If you sleep on this now, then we’ll see you at the mezzanine
Real hot issue, cold hard currency
Term sheet poppin’ so check check out the equity
Mister Investor, Mister VC
I’m down to take a number, but don’t make me take a knee