This Is Your Funnel on Dust

Day 1 — The Arrival

They all brought pens.

Gel pens. Rollerballs. One guy even brought a fountain pen — as if humidity exists out here.

By Day 1, they were useless. Ink dried. Barrels cracked. Nibs clogged with dust.

Me? I brought the Carbon Fang GT™.

A tactical instrument, engineered to withstand 110°F heat, alkaline playa grit, and the kind of pressure that kills lesser founders. Think diving watch, except for thought.

So when SolarDolphin told me to scream into a shipping container, I screamed. The sound was raw, unpolished, like a founder mid-downround. I felt exposed. Alone. Then the Carbon Fang GT™ steadied me, translating pain into ink.

Day 2 — The Vision

Expectation: Burning Man erases hierarchy.
Reality: In a Wi-Fi-free desert, the man with the only working pen is king.

I wrote everything. Their epiphanies. Their sobs. Their metaphors about dust being childhood or whatever.

“Crying is a KPI.” Hydration is acquisition.” “We are all funnels.”

They gasped. They wept. One woman gave me a sticker that said Human API. Others tried to borrow my Fang. I said no. Tactical gear doesn’t get shared.

Day 3

I lose track of time. I measure the hours by hydration tabs and how much dust is in my teeth.
I build a framework in the dirt:

• Stage 1: Want

• Stage 2: Signal

• Stage 3: Collapse

• Stage 4: Memeable insight

I stare at it for too long. Someone thinks it’s art.
It’s not. It’s marketing trauma, diagrammed.

Day 4

I try to leave. But the pens keep writing.
My hand won’t stop.

“If your onboarding flow isn’t healing you, what is it even doing?”
“Am I a founder, or just a symptom of LinkedIn?”
“This is not product-market fit. This is grief.”

When I get back

The calendar invites start again. The DMs. The MRR screenshots from other men still building.
I go to type. I hesitate.

Then I reach for the Carbon Fang GT™. The dust is still in the cap.
I leave it there.