Guy Reams (00:01.294)
This is day 99, the truth we cannot know. I woke up this morning thinking about Bobby Weir. If you do not know, he was one of the original members of the band The Warlocks, which became The Grateful Dead. What got me thinking was the fact that he had no idea what the truth was. He was the least likely character to ever be called a rock star, yet a rock star he became, and more than that.
even an iconic figure in all human history. His quirky behavior, strange playing style, and obscure lyrics all formed the basis of some of the most beloved songs in the Dead Pantheon. Perhaps he had a clue of the truth when he walked onto an awkward makeshift stage for one of their free concerts in downtown San Francisco and saw for the first time that thousands had gathered and were singing along with him.
Still, probably was just having fun, focused on what he was doing, no inkling of the truth whatsoever, no inkling that he would be one of the founding fathers of a social movement that would change music, change how live performances were conceived of, and in many ways change the world. He had quite literally struck a chord with the heartbeat of an entire generation, and at that point his success was inevitable.
He eventually figured that out, but not until he was an old man looking back at what had happened. Now many years later, the streets of San Francisco will be filled on January 17th tomorrow with people not there to hear and play, but rather to pay tribute to the man who had helped them all discover the wonders of nature and to ultimately answer the question, are you kind? This thought led me to a more important discovery.
Once again, Bobby Weir has influenced my thoughts, as he has many times before. The discovery is that I too will never really know the truth. You cannot, nor will you ever know, what the future holds or what hides behind the closed doors of our perception. All you have is your faith, your personal ambition, and a cup of rain. Sprinkle that wherever you will, but you will just not, nor can you ever know the truth.
Guy Reams (02:24.354)
That is until you join Bobby in death and then maybe, just maybe at that moment, will some truth be revealed to you. Is that the truth that there is just nothing after all? Or will you learn something far more profound? We will all find out. What is it, Bobby? Will you finally show us the way? Perhaps you already did. Bobby was a musician, did not start out as a great one either.
He was just a kid who liked the vibe of playing in a band and he played along with his friends and look what happened. What are you? Well, I'm an entrepreneur for a tech startup. I have no answers. I have no truth. I do not know what tomorrow will bring any more than you do. All Bobby had was his guitar and his curiosity. All I have is my keyboard and the same curiosity.
It is why I was attracted to his music and why when the times are dark and all is lost, it is a few of his tunes that pick me up when I'm feeling blue. The startup world is full of people who think they know the truth. They have their pitch decks, their market research and their projections that stretch five years into a future they cannot possibly predict. They stand in conference rooms and speak with certainty about events that have not yet occurred.
They build elaborate plans on the foundations of assumptions. They mistake confidence for knowledge. But the truth is that none of us know what we are creating until it is already built. None of us knows if the thing we are pouring our lives into will matter to anyone else. We are all just playing our instruments and hoping someone out there hears the song. I think about the early days of the Grateful Dead when they were
still the Warlocks when they were just a group of friends playing music in a basement somewhere. They had no business plan. They had no strategy for world domination. They had no vision of becoming cultural icons. They just had the music and the willingness to keep showing up. They played because they liked playing. They experimented because they were curious. They kept going because stopping never occurred to them as an option.
Guy Reams (04:42.104)
The success came later almost as a side effect of their commitment to the music itself. This is the lesson I keep learning and forgetting and then learning again. The work is the thing, not the outcome, not the recognition, not the validation from investors, customers of the market, the work, the daily practice of showing up and doing the next thing. The willingness to keep moving forward even when you have no idea where you are going.
The faith that if you stay true to the process, something worthwhile will emerge. I do not know if my startup will succeed. I do not know if the product I am building will matter to anyone. I do not know if the hours I spend writing code, drafting contracts, and sending cold emails will lead anywhere. I have no truth to offer you about the future. I have no certainty. I have no guarantees. All I have is this keyboard, my ambition.
and the willingness to keep going.
Bobby Weir did not set out to change the world. He set out to play music. The world changed anyway, not because he had a grand plan, but because he stayed committed to the work. He showed up. He played. He experimented. He trusted the process even when he did not understand where it was leading. He kept going when others would have quit. And somewhere along the way, without him fully realizing it, he became part of something larger than himself.
This is the only truth I have found that holds up under any scrutiny. You cannot know the outcome. You cannot predict the future. You cannot control what happens next. But you can show up. You can do the work. You can stay committed to the process. You can trust that if you keep moving forward, something will emerge. It will be great. It may be small. Maybe it will matter to thousands. Perhaps it will matter to just one.
Guy Reams (06:40.994)
You will not know until you get there. So here I am at three in the morning and the only truth I have is this keyboard and my ambition. What will become of me and all that I create? I have no idea. Neither do you. Looks like rain feels like rain and here comes the rain. So in this spirit, I get ready to start the day. I'm playing Bobby's music in the background as I fiercely type the following line of code, draft the next
contract, send yet another cold email. What will the future hold? I do not know. But I will leave you with Bobby's parting words. I do not trust, I do not trust a nothing, but know it comes out right. The truth is that we are all Bobbyware in our own way. We are all playing our instruments in the dark, hoping someone out there hears the song. We are all building something we do not fully understand.
Trusting that if we stay committed to the work, something worthwhile will emerge. We are all walking onto makeshift stages, not knowing if anyone will show up. Not knowing if what we have to offer will matter. And that is okay. That is the only way it works. You cannot know the truth until you live it. You cannot see the future until you create it. You cannot understand the impact until it has already happened. So I will just keep showing up. I will keep doing the work.
I will keep playing my instrument, whatever that instrument may be, and I will trust that if I stay committed to the process, if I keep moving forward, even when I do not know where I'm going, something will emerge. It will be great. It may be small. It may change the world. Maybe it'll just change me. I will not know until I get there, and that is the only truth that I really have.