Culture

Oh, The Places Asana Will Go – A Dr. Seussian Poem by Our Kenny Van Zant

Oh, the places you'll go - Asana Version
Kenny Van Zant is our Main Business Guy. He is the exec that oversees marketing, sales, user operations (customer support) and a whole lot more. As he revealed to the team at a party to celebrate our recent launches, Kenny is also a conduit for the immortal soul of Dr. Seuss. The following is the poem Kenny wrote in honor of the release of our Premium Workspaces. We thought it was awesome, so we’re sharing it with you. We hope you enjoy it.

Oh, The Places Asana Will Go

Congratulations!
Today is our day.
We’re a real business!
People have started to pay!

With reason in our heads.
And love in our hearts
We have steered our new company
into uncharted parts.
We can build A to Z and ALL the betweens.
And WE are the team who’ll decide what that means.

We’ll test our ideas. Split test’em with care.
About some we will say, “no one seems to click there.”
With our heads full of reason and our hearts full of love,
we’re too smart to keep any of the not-so-good stuff.

And we may even find that
Some ideas are quite nice.
In that case, of course,
We’ll just raise our price.

It’s funner these days
with users who pay.

Now an outage can happen
and frequently does
even to teams mindful
and loving as us.

So when processes slow,
don’t worry. Don’t swoon.
On Call may be sleeping,
But they’ll have it fixed soon.

Whoa! THE PLACES WE’LL GO!

We’ll be on our way up!
We’ll join the high fliers
We’ll be one of those teams
who lands all the new hires.

They’ll say “Asana’s a blend of hotness and speed!”
We’ll pass all the incumbents and soon take the lead.
Whatever we build, will be feature complete.
Whenever we launch, we’ll get all the tweets!

Except when we don’t
Because, sometimes, we won’t.

I’m sorry to say so
but, often we’ll cuss
the performance regressions
that happen to us.

We can be thrown off balance
from an unstable patch.
All our sprints can be halted.
All our product plans scratched.

And when things stabilize
our growth might have shrunk.
And the chances are, then,
that we’ll be in a funk.

And when we’re in a funk,
we’re not in for much fun.
Un-funking your team
is not easily done.

We might come to a place where the energy’s wrong.
Some meetings are short. But mostly they’re long.
A place where everyone passes the buck!
Do you dare to stay quiet? Do you dare to speak up?
The people are boring. The parties all suck.

NO! That won’t be us!

Somehow *we’ll* persevere
when our nerves are all frayed.
We’ll remember our vision
is why the customers paid.

With our mission held high,
We’re Doing Great Things!
Ready – for anything that we dare dream.
Ready – because we’re the very best team!

WHOA! The places we’ll go! There’s much work to be done!
There are metrics to be grown! There are markets to be won!
And the magical things we can do with PR
will make us the shiniest company star.
Fire! We’ll be on fire, the hottest of the bunch,
with the whole world reading about us on TechCrunch.

Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times
we’ll fail to heed
what our customers tell us
and we’ll struggle to succeed

Failure!
Whether we like it or not,
failing will be something
we’ll do quite a lot.

And when we do fail, there’s even a chance
that fear makes us doubt our statistical significance!
But we’re a pragmatic group, who gets on our way.
Because there are tasks to be done, some later, some today.

So on we will go
though the photographers foul
On we will go
though copy cats prowl
On we will go
making competitors howl
Luna will make
our reactivity strong,
even with r-values right
and our l-values wrong.

On and on we will build
making customers sing
and our rivals will wonder,
“how’d they do such a thing?”

We’ll get mixed up, of course,
as we already know.
we’ll push very hard
and get tired as we go.
So find your right pace,
balance late nights with rest
and remember that Life’s
a Great Mindfulness Test.
Just take time each day look deep within.
And never mix up your yang with your yin.

And will We succeed?
Yes! We will, indeed!
(Because Dustin said it’s a hundred percent guaranteed.)

ASANA, YOU’LL DO GREAT THINGS!

So…
with twister, and boggle, and chocolate & scotch
and the many attempts to read Gödel Escher Bach,
We’ve passed one more hurdle,
We’re a business at last!
Our destiny is waiting.
So…let’s raise a glass!

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