The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel (3 page)

“
H
old on
. Hold on,” yelled Megan. “You bought that stupid website? I thought I told you it was a stupid idea. Are you stupid or something?”

She had started the day in such a great mood. He had made her a buffet breakfast that morning with Belgian waffles, eggs, bacon, cantaloupe, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. When she asked why, he said
because you deserve it
with a low raspy hush in a horrible but endearing attempt to sound sexy. The white T-shirt and scruffy beard almost helped him pull off the faux sexy voice, but the Superman pants just made her giggle and roll her eyes. But now, at dinnertime, her good mood had morphed into a suspicious one.

“I don’t think we ever finished that conversation,” said David. “Plus it’s from my savings.”

“If our relationship is going anywhere, then what you do with your money directly impacts me too.”

“I told you it would pay for itself,” said David.

“After twenty years, and only then if monkeys started falling from the sky. How much did it cost?”

David paused.

“Twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight dollars. Thirty-eight was the escrow and wire fees. I shopped around and found a discount for escrow. It saved us like a hundred bucks!”

Megan got up from the dinner table without saying another word. That was a generous way to describe the square black card table they had bought at a local Goodwill because of its faux leather top. When friends came over and they wanted more room to socialize, they could fold up the legs and store it behind their beat-up old sofa. They had furnished their small one-bedroom apartment mainly with hand-me-downs and thrift shop finds.

Megan walked silently into the kitchen. They didn’t have anything close to that kind of spending money for something like this. He watched her pace, then pause to lean against the sink and stare at the floor. David stayed seated, reminding himself quietly that the best thing to do in these situations was to give her time to think.

“How many credit cards?” she asked.

“Three. No interest for eighteen months. By then I’ll be able to pay them all off with the revenue from sales.”

David didn’t want to look at Megan’s face. He didn’t even glance in her direction. Her slender shape was broken in disgust. Then all at once she stiffened up.

“Sell it back. Right now. Sell it to the first stupid loser you can find.”

Megan’s stern voice prompted David to stand up. He walked over to the kitchen.

“You have to give me a chance, Meg. We could get out of this paycheck-to-paycheck existence. This could help pay off my college debts and let me help my sister. Hell, I could help your family with this money. We’re never going to stand out from the crowd if we act like the crowd for all our miserable existence on this tiny planet.” David grabbed Megan’s arm. “Don’t you get it, Meg? Without this, what am I working for? What am I doing anything for? Without this, I don’t know...”

Megan tore her arm away from David’s grasp. “Why are you with me, David? Where is this all going? Do you need this harebrained website to be with me?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

David walked to the card table, picked up the plates with half-eaten dinners, and started to wash them to the sink.

“David, I love you. I really do. But you make it hard to love you. What makes you think you can make it? Do you know how many harebrained ideas my dad used to have? He got nowhere. He went bankrupt in a Ponzi scheme and left my mother and me with nothing.”

Megan wouldn’t move out of the way and instead yanked the dishes out of David’s hands and began rewashing them. David picked up a towel to dry them and they stood shoulder to shoulder at the sink, both looking out of the small window. The sun was setting far above the overcast clouds, which turned a gloomy spring evening into a dark foggy haze.

“If you don’t know what makes me different than your dad by now, I don’t...” David trailed off mumbling something unintelligible and then walked a few feet toward the bay window in the adjoining living room. He threw himself on the couch and opened his laptop.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Megan. “Don’t walk away from me. Come back and talk.”

David was already lost in the computer. Megan stomped over, hands still wet, and slammed the laptop shut.

“Hey!” David nearly jumped out of his seat, but Megan was standing right in front of him, blocking his exit.

“I was talking to you.”

David’s heart was beating through his chest. He just wanted her to understand that he was doing this for them. He wanted her to believe in him. He wanted her to understand the disgust and pity he had for her father. He wanted her to be proud of him. “I need to finish my blog post. No one visits a blog without fresh content…”

“It’s all about you. YOUR blog post. YOUR website. YOUR sister. YOUR student loans. Do you even spend time thinking about me? Do you care about anything besides yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. You care about stupid jellyfish, apparently. You care more about jellyfish than your own girlfriend.”

“No.”

“Are you down to monosyllabic speech now?”

David opened his laptop again and started typing.

“Fine, go hide in YOUR laptop.” Megan grabbed her keys and stormed out of the apartment. David continued hitting the keys.

David wiped the dishwater left by Megan’s wet hands off the back of his laptop. He finished the blog post. It was the first post that had been added to the blog in the last year, but David hoped he could use some search engine tricks to bring the business back to life. He logged into his sales dashboard.

Zero.

He pressed refresh.

T
he large warehouse
was practically empty, so even though there were only two men in it and only one of them was typing on a keyboard, the clacking sounds filled the space. The man on the computer was wearing a trench coat and heavy black boots. The man over his shoulder was wearing an expensive grey suit, a freshly pressed white button-up shirt, and a pair of brown leather loafers.

“How close are we?” said the man in the suit.

“Close.”

The warehouse was poorly lit, with exposed metal beams and a tin roof. The corner closest to the door was littered with large brown boxes stacked on crates. In the opposite corner was a metal desk with a laptop and some electronic parts.

“How certain are you that this will work?” The man in the suit was scratching his hand. He started pacing. His leather loafers were evidently new, because they kept squeaking and making scratching noises. He was a large man—tall, not wide—but with a lot of mass.

“Certain.”

The man on the computer stopped typing. He pulled the USB cord out of his computer and disconnected a small motherboard the size of a deck of playing cards. He looked at the man in the suit with cold dark eyes.

“Done.”

“And what’s the signal strength?”

“I said, done. It’ll work.”

The man in the suit passed a bulging brown envelope across the table. He picked up the motherboard, placed it carefully in another brown envelope and put it in his pocket.

The man at the computer started typing again, but paused and looked up, slightly annoyed. “Yes?”

“Let’s stop all online communications.”

“Fine.”

“See you on the other side, Gabriel.”

The clacking sounds resumed.

“
D
idn’t I tell you
? Isn’t this office space awesome?” said Andrew proudly.

“It’s nothing like I expected,” said David.

The MochaToca office was a modern, sprawling jungle inside an older traditional thirteen-floor office building in the middle of downtown Portland. Because the Pearl District was the fashionable place to have your startup, seeing as it was the trendy urban renewal area in the Northwest, many of the office spaces were both expensive and small. MochaToca had grown so quickly that they had now taken over the top five floors and were in negotiations on two more.

A petite twenty-something woman who looked like a Georgia Peach gone punk with jet-black pixie-cut hair and tattoos of a panther on one arm and a bear on the other peeking out of her neon yellow tank top walked right up to David and Andrew.

“You must be Andrew and David. I heard you might be coming to visit today. Would you gentlemen like a tour?”

“Yes, very nice to meet you, Jeni, we would love a tour,” said Andrew with bright eyes. David leaned over, jammed his elbow into his friend’s side and whispered: “Stop gawking.”

“Can I get you two some coffee from our in-house coffee bar?” Jeni directed them through the main foyer, which had a floating glass wall made of smaller glass panes hanging offset at different heights. Each pane was made of electric frosted glass and the opacity was set to turn on and off randomly, which created a breathtaking effect.

“Yeah, coffee would be great.”

As they passed the glass wall, it opened to a bustling office. In the middle was a meadow of open space freckled with leather couches, white sitting cushions, and metal coffee tables with glass tops. On the periphery of the room were rows and rows of grey desks and tall green chairs. Many of the desks had sleek twenty-seven-inch iMacs and some even had a second display. A few of the desks had plants on them, large succulents and flowering cactuses. The walls were mostly bare and grey, but they were speckled with magnificent stag ferns the size of a baby elephant’s ear.

And then there were the flags. Everywhere you turned, there were flags. There were green flags and brown flags and black flags and white flags. Some flags indicated different groups: Web Developers, Customer Support, Global Sales, iOS Developers, Copy Writers, and even the Lawyers. Other flags indicated a favorite sports groups: mainly Timbers, Ducks, Beavers, and Seahawks. There were flags to indicate favorite music bands and even a few pirate flags.

“I see you noticed our flags. Some people call ’em campy, but I like ’em.” Jeni kept walking.

“They seem really well designed, with a consistent font and a color pallet that works,” said Andrew with a smile.

David spoke under his breath, “Ooh, aren’t we just Mr. Project Runway today.”

“Andrea says they create an atmosphere where people can have self-expression, but also one where people know what their neighbors are up to,” said Jeni, looking back at them with a faint smile.

“What’s she like?” asked David.

“Andrea? She’s awesome. Really generous woman. She took a big chance on me—I used to serve her coffee at Starbucks. We started talking and all of a sudden she asked me if I would come work for her as her assistant. Double the pay I was making pushing coffee.”

They walked past bright chatty corners full of noise and activity. “Here is our inside sales team,” explained Jeni. There were dark broody corners that smelled of over-brewed coffee. “Over there’s our sys-admins, they don’t much like the light.” Everyone looked busy, but like they were also having fun.

“So what do you guys do?” asked Jeni.

“I’m in between things right now, but just got out of investment banking,” explained Andrew. “David’s a wantrepreneur,” he said with a smile. Andrea kinked her head and squinted slightly.

“I sell jellyfish tanks online,” said David.

“Cool. Andrea meets with bankers and entrepreneurs all the time. She does a monthly founders dinner here too. It’s all Greek to me though. I frankly couldn’t tell the difference between an investment banker or a bank teller.” They arrived at the coffee stand.

“What’ll it be?” The barista didn’t look up from the large chrome espresso machine shooting steam into whole milk.

“Americano, please,” said David.

“Macchiato,” said Andrew.

David reached for his wallet, but noticed there wasn’t a cash register.

“We don’t charge for coffee,” explained Jeni. “Just tip the man if you want to.” David put a couple dollars into a tin can next to the espresso machine.

“Aren’t you going to get something?” asked Andrew.

“I’m fine, tryin’ to cut down.” Jeni scanned the room. David followed her gaze and saw a young woman with perfectly straight dirty blonde hair striding confidently toward a batch of desks near a banner labeled “Code Monkeys.” Usually when programmers are approached by beautiful women, they diffuse like oil on water or wilt like cut flowers in the sun. But these code monkeys welcomed the woman as one of them, and greeted her warmly.

“That’s Andrea, our fearless leader. Want to meet her?”

“Yeah,” they both said in unison.

“She’s usually on back-to-back phone calls, but you can occasionally grab her for a minute.”

As they made their way through a meadow of couches, David noticed a wall covered in what appeared to be a huge crossword puzzle. A couple of geeks were standing at the wall, filling in words in different parts of the puzzle. Down a corridor, there appeared to be a large metal tube that another employee was crouching into. Jeni jogged to catch up with Andrea’s quick pace.

“Andrea, I’d like you to meet David and Andrew.”

“I am really excited to meet you,” said David.

“Nice to meet you too, David.” Andrea wasn’t nearly as young as he initially thought. Up close, he noticed neck and forehead wrinkles that aged her, but she was so well put together in a fitted Kelly green sheath dress, white knitted cardigan, and white pumps that she pulled off looking much younger.

“Thanks for letting us come see the office,” said Andrew. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It’s awesome.”

“We're keen to recruit and keep Portland’s best talent. I’m glad you both could come. Has Jeni shown you around?”

“We just picked up some coffee. I was going to show them the inter-floor slide next,” interjected Jeni before the guys could answer.

“Actually, I just started a company recently, and I would really appreciate some advice if we could schedule a coffee or something,” said David.

“Jeni, why don’t you finish the tour with Andrew. I have a couple minutes before my next conference call starts. I can take David to my desk for a chat.”

“Careful,” said Andrew. “David will talk your ear off if you let him.” David blushed. Andrew winked and turned back to Jeni as they walked away. Andrea escorted David a few desks down. She pulled up a second chair and invited David to sit.

“I thought you would have a big fancy office,” said David.

“I do my calls from shared private offices, but I try to spend as much time with my people as possible. So how can I help you?”

David felt nervous and excited. He didn’t know how much he should really say, given that he had just met this woman. But he figured if anyone could help, it would be she.

“I just bought a website in an auction that sells jellyfish tanks. It’s based on a drop-ship system so I don’t need to buy inventory. All I have to do is get people interested in buying them. The problem is that I haven’t sold any yet. The website was super popular a year ago, but I’m having trouble making it relevant again. How do I get people to find me?”

“I see. Let’s back up. Tell me your story.” Andrea sat in her chair and waved for David to sit near her.

“Well, I started using computers when I was little. I was really good at programming—took to it like a fish to water.”

“Or a jellyfish.”

David blushed. “Yes. A jellyfish. Anyway, I read
The 4-Hour Workweek
and
Hackers & Painters
and realized that I could do that. I realized that I could make money on the Internet with my skills by carving out a niche. So I started looking on auction websites and found the jellyfish site and thought I could use my computer skills to revive it. I thought it would be a slam dunk. I’m good at SEO and design, so I just needed to give it a new look and give it some new content. Easy.”

Andrea leaned forward with a pensive look in her eyes. “So that’s why you’re doing this? The money?”

“Well, no. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I hate working for other people.” David looked at his watch. 11:56 a.m. He worried he was out of time, but Andrea didn’t seem concerned with her next meeting. Her light brown eyes were focused only on him.

“David, please, I am not judging, just asking. It’s fine if money is your only motivation. I just want to know what makes you tick.” Andrea uncrossed her arms.

“I guess I just want to do something important. I want to do something meaningful. I want to help people through software. In a small way, the jellyfish startup gives people better access to a service most people couldn’t get before. Owning personal jellyfish wasn’t possible until these specialized tanks came on the market. So…yeah, I guess ideally I want to fill a niche where everyone is happy, the customers, the guys building the tanks and me.”

“But do you like being a salesman? Why not work as a programmer or a designer?”

“I wrote code for my day job, but, okay, yes—it’s really about money. I want to be independently wealthy. I don’t want to have to work again. And I want to be able to help my sister. She is chronically sick, and I want to be able to support her.”

Andrea paused. She settled back into her chair and let the moment be. Then slowly, she turned to David. “There are much easier ways to get rich, David. The road to wealth is a well-beaten path. Go work on Wall Street for a few years. Get into real estate. Flip houses or become a broker for high-end properties. Why create a tech startup?”

“Because it’s what I know,” said David. “It’s what I’m passionate about. Ever since I was a kid, I loved computers. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to change the way people use computers. The computerized age has brought so many efficiencies to our lives, but has left so many opportunities untouched. People think computers have changed the landscape of things for the better, but that’s only half of the story. Yes, it’s brought many outdated klutzy things up to date, but there are downsides. We now stare at screens instead of looking at each other at restaurants, and we think that’s acceptable behavior. We let anonymous services search and control our email and calendars without any concern about the future implications. The most popular email system in the world is run by one of the world’s largest ad agencies. Does nobody else find that disturbing? When the consequences of our actions are made clear, people will wonder how we got there. It happened slowly, one degree at a time. We won’t realize until it’s too late. This is a blessing and a curse, and…it’s an opportunity.”

“So why jellyfish?”

“They look cool?”

Andrea laughed.

“Well, it made sense at the time,” said David.

Andrea’s phone started buzzing. “I’m sorry, I have to take this. It was really good meeting you. Leave me a business card. I think you might be on to something, but stop thinking so small. Follow your instincts, stop fooling around with the latest financial trends like passive income. That stuff is snake oil. People make more money teaching passive income techniques than through actual passive income methodologies. There is no way around the hard work of building a lasting business.” She waved him off and answered the phone. “Hello, this is Andrea.”

David quietly left a card on her desk and snuck away to find Andrew.