Learning Curve (11 page)

I
t was already evening in Heidelberg, and the rain and gloom were stripping even the picturesque old college town of its cheer. Dan had promised Annabelle that he'd buy Aidan a nice Christmas gift while he was in Germany—and this being his last day, he had carved out time for an expedition in Heidelberg's shopping district. He hadn't known at the time what a constructive choice this would be: it gave him a chance to clear his head after a spectacularly awful day.

The plan had been to fly down from Brussels to Mannheim at dawn, then spend the morning visiting the Validator plant just outside the city. After that, it would be lunch and couple hours of media interviews, then a car would drive Dan and Lisa to Heidelberg. Lisa had spent a year there as an undergraduate, and would visit a favorite old professor while Dan shopped. On her recommendation, they would then check in and grab some dinner at the Dueling House at the Hotel
die Hirschgasse
, then walk over the Rhine and up the hill to the great castle, where they'd enjoy its evocative lighting.

It had all looked good on the travel schedule, but even before they climbed on the jet in Brussels, Dan already knew that nothing was going to go as planned. Unlike the UK/Scandinavia/Russia trip a month before—or even the Far Eastern trip two weeks later—this trip was proving to be less a rallying of the troops, and more a triage tour. The chaos ignited by the announcement at the annual meeting had grown by the day, as complaints from customers increased in volume and anger. Now even the most loyal and patient twenty-year customers were angry—and were no doubt looking elsewhere.

He had seen the early numbers. Revenues had flattened. Margins had risen slightly, but not enough to justify the loss of an entire dedicated sales force. There were enough accounting tricks—held-over earnings, write-offs, late bookings—to put up a nice cosmetic financial front, but Dan had been around long enough to know that nobody would be fooled for long. The market and its analysts, reporters, and bloggers were all scrutinizing Validator Software's every move, ready to pounce on the first sign of weakness and declare the move a failure. He was secretly aware that the stock price was already softening. It hadn't fallen yet, but that was only because the booming stock market was still managing to lift all boats, even the leaking ones.

It was only a matter of time. The growth of Validator's stock, just four months ago the gold standard of the industry, was now falling well behind the competition—even the also-rans like CMR. No doubt the market was also factoring in the eTernity IPO, which could happen at any moment. But that was at the expected price of $26 per share. If it went much higher than that, the IPO could send another shock wave through the industry, and Validator would be in serious trouble.

But even assuming that eTernity's offering went as predicted, the entire electronics industry would wake up the next morning with the knowledge that there was a major new player on the scene. ETernity would have stolen industry leadership—and already some top talent—from one of the most storied companies in tech, and they would have a huge war chest of cash on hand to consolidate their new position. Now, when the time came for investors to make their next major capital purchase, where would they go? To the giant old company that seemed confused and lost, or to the hot young company that the world had designated as the next big thing? The answer was in the question, and Dan knew it.

So did everyone else at Validator Software. Now, as he raced around the world trying to buck up his demoralized troops, he found himself looking out over the sullen and dispirited crowds and asking himself:
How many of you already have your updated resumés on the street?
Was it the ones with the confrontational questions and the angry faces? Or the ones who turned away when he looked at their part of the room?

The visits to major customers were, if possible, even worse. Several major clients had cancelled meetings at the last moment, without even the courtesy of offering an explanation. Even the gracious customers had no hesitation about demanding that Dan provide a dedicated Validator employee to replace the attention they had received from the now-absent salesperson. One Texas manufacturer, who had first bought Validator 1.0 from the founder himself, hadn't even shaken Dan's hand before dropping his pronouncement. “I don't know what the fuck you and Cosmo are up to,” he'd said, “but I've already informed my IT people that they better have a back up program ready to go in case you folks commit business suicide. Nothing personal, you understand,” he'd added grudgingly, “but I've got a lot of customers, shareholders, and employees depending on me, and I ain't prepared to take your kind of risk.”

That man was no fool, Dan reflected. Neither were his employees. They read the news; they knew the long odds against the success of this new strategy. All of them were experiencing first-hand the company's struggle to create a web-based sales program robust enough to handle the complex demands of a vast customer base—and to qualify, train, and get up to speed a small-army of contract sales people. They'd heard the complaints. They woke up every morning asking themselves if they'd been foolish enough to tie themselves to a doomed company, whether their stock options were worth the paper they were printed on, and—if worse came to worst—if they could find another job before the economy slumped again.

Dan asked himself the same question a dozen times each day—mostly on the long plane flights, when he had nothing to occupy himself but his own thoughts. The gnawing fear, the perpetual jetlag, and the stress of dealing daily with angry and unhappy people, was beginning to take its toll on him. Thanks to a diet of half-eaten meals, antacids, and painkillers, he had lost fifteen pounds. He couldn't remember his last uninterrupted night's sleep.

And home was no better than the road. He dreaded going back to the Valley. At the office, there was the silence among the employees whenever he passed, the new secrecy among his senior staff, the stares in the restaurants. At home, Aidan was sullen, resentful, and quick to shout. She had taken to wearing black and had gotten a tongue piercing and stud without her parent's permission—a subject of endless argument with her mother. Meanwhile—and not without reason—Annabelle had turned her suspicions about their daughter's secrets into an obsession that seemed to fill her every waking moment, making normal discourse almost impossible. Dan was almost relieved when he occasionally woke in the middle of the night: only then could he be alone, away from the looks and the whispers and the imminent prospect of more bad news.

It was during just such a late night reverie, as he sat in the moonlight on the living room sofa and stared out the big window at the lights of the Valley below, that Annabelle found him. Wrapped in a down comforter, she curled into a nearby chair and wove her gray-streaked hair into a loose ponytail.

“This isn't worth it, you know,” she said.

He didn't reply.

“This was Cosmo's idea,” she went on. “Although he doesn't seem to be taking any blame for it. You're getting it all. And it's going to kill you if it lasts much longer.”

“I'm tougher than you think,” Dan said shortly.

“Maybe, but not as tough as
you
think. Have you taken a good look at yourself in the mirror lately? You've aged five years in the last five weeks. How long do you think you can keep this up?”

“As long as I need to,” he snapped. “That's my job as CEO. That's why they pay me so much money.”

“We've got enough money to last us the rest of our lives. And what's money anyway if you have a heart attack or stroke and end up incapacitated… or dead?”

Dan snorted. “Now you're being dramatic.”

“Am I?” she asked. “You and I know four men your age who've died from stress-related illness in the last two years.”

Dan looked out the window at the palette of blues that the moonlight had created out of their garden. “Look, you know it's a lot more complicated than that, and I'm not going to indulge your fears by disputing you case by case.”

“Fine,” said Annabelle. “You just keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better. But tell me something: when exactly does all of this end? Because if you've been through hell in the last three months, so have Aiden and I. If anything, the situation is worse now than when you started. I haven't read anything, or heard anything from you, to be reassured that things are going to get any better for months—or even years. Are you really prepared to put our lives on hold for that long while you try to fix this mess?” she demanded. “Especially since there's no guarantee that you ever will?”

“I will.”

“Or die trying?” she asked. “What happens when it's five years from now, Validator Software is in worse shape than ever, you've wrecked your health, and you've completely missed your daughter's last years at home with us?”

Dan was silent for a long time. When he spoke again his voice was slower and more measured. “I remember when you used to believe in me, Annabelle. I remember when you used to tell me I could accomplish anything.”

She sighed. “Honey, I still believe in you, but after twenty-two years of marriage I also know how stubborn you are. You never give up. And you have an obsessive sense of responsibility…”

“And that's a bad thing?” Dan snapped.

Annabelle held her hand up. It was pale blue in the moonlight. “Let me finish. Those are things I love about you. They make you a remarkable man. But you need to stop and get some perspective on all this before you plunge back into it again. You need to remember that you have
other
responsibilities just as important as Validator Software—responsibilities to your family. To yourself.”

Dan gritted his teeth. “Do you really think for a single second that I've forgotten my family?”

“No.” Annabelle put her face down into the comforter and seemed to be formulating her phrasing. “But I'm afraid you assume you can handle
both.
This isn't a normal situation, Dan. And frankly, I'm not sure you can handle
either
Validator
or
your family.”

He reared up, dropping his blanket on the floor. “Great,” he said sarcastically. “Thanks for the show of faith.”

“Honey,” she protested, “please don't take it that way. You have a remarkably analytical mind. And you have the confidence to believe you can solve any problem, no matter how big it is. But now you've got two problems, and I'm not sure that any amount of analysis can solve either of them.”

He slumped back down in the sofa. “Okay,” he acknowledged. “I understand you might think that my company is an intractable problem. I think you're wrong, but I can understand it. But I don't understand what you mean by a second problem.”

“Good God, Dan!” she exclaimed. “This is what I've been trying to tell you for the last few months!” She stopped, and spoke slowly as if he were someone who didn't understand English. “Aidan. Is. Spinning. Out. of Control,” she said. “She's heading for trouble,” she went on more normally, “and I don't know how to stop her.”

“Oh please,” he said wearily. “So she changes her look and gets a stupid piercing. Every teenaged kid in the world does that. I did. And I know you did a whole lot worse…”

“That's right. I did. Maybe that's why I can see where this is headed better than you.”

“Or maybe you're just seeing more than what's really there.”

“Is that what you actually think?” asked Annabelle, her voice raising.“You think I'm just some hysterical woman living out my own fears through my daughter?”

“No,” he said hastily. “No. All I'm saying is that I make it a point when I'm home to spend as much time with Aidan as I can. I'm there with her at breakfast and most of the time at dinner. Yeah, she looks pretty silly. And she's developed a pretty shitty attitude. And she treats you like dirt. But I don't see anything you wouldn't find in half the homes in this Valley…”

“And half the homes in this town have kids on drugs or getting pregnant or committing crimes.”

“Oh come on,” he protested. “Even
you
don't really believe that. I don't see any symptoms of that in Aidan.”

“Fine. So I'm over-reacting.”

“Yes, maybe you are. I think you're just frightened by this crazy turn of events with me, and these unexpected changes in our little girl.”

“And I think you're working very hard to ignore what's happening in front of your face!” She stared at him, then buried her face in the comforter. When she lifted it again, tears, metallic in the moonlight, were running down her face. “The truth is,” she said in an agonized whisper, “that I'm afraid of losing both of you.”

“You won't,” Dan assured her.