Final Venture

3

Net Cop was located in a modern industrial park in the romantically named Hemlock Gorge, a small wooded valley just off Route 128 in Wellesley. The whole company was basically a room of engineers in cubicles on the first floor of a low, brown, all-purpose building. I received a wave from Gina, the company's only secretary, and looked for Craig. At this stage of the company's life, all the work was being done on computers. On one side of the room sat the hardware engineers, and the software engineers sat on the other. They were different breeds of people who spoke totally different computer languages: the hardware guys used Verilog, and the software guys C++. Craig needed to get these two groups working together. This was achieved by a small team of bilingual engineers who sat in the middle of the room with a handsome golden retriever called Java.

Many of the staff were surprisingly old, some of them even had grey hair. Craig liked to hire experienced people, the enthusiastic nerds of the eighties who now had wives, children and a little common sense.

It was a good team. A great team, Craig said. And from a standing start they had already achieved more in six months than much bigger firms' R &D departments had achieved in two years.

I spotted the man himself drawing at breakneck speed over a double whiteboard in the corner. Boxes and arrows spread across the large white surface in bewildering confusion, and Craig finished off his point with a resounding question mark, scribbled with such emphasis he almost broke the pen. Two engineers were listening to him: an Indian with a greying beard, and a large man with a bulging yellow T-shirt and hair that was receding at the front, and advancing rapidly down his back.

I crossed the room and coughed gently.

Craig turned round. 'Hey, Simon! Howya doin'?' Despite his MIT education, he sported one of the dozen or so local Boston accents, which he clung on to tenaciously. He was grinning broadly, as though he were genuinely pleased to see me. Perhaps he was.

'I'm fine, Craig. How are you?' I replied, nervously.

'So, when do we get the dough?'

'That's what I wanted to talk to you about. There's a problem.'

'A problem? What kind of problem?'

The two men Craig had been lecturing were watching us with interest. In fact, I could feel eyes from all around the room resting on us.

'Can we talk about it in your office?'

Craig paused, looking around him. 'OK, come on,' he growled, and led me over to his small glass corner office.

He closed the door behind me.

'What's the problem?'

I took a deep breath. 'Revere has decided to make no further investment in Net Cop,' I said. 'Sorry, Craig.'

'What do you mean, you're not going to give us the money?' Craig's face reddened, and his thick neck bulged even further, the veins clearly visible. His muscles tensed large under his T-shirt. He struck the small conference table in his office so forcefully I thought it would break.

'You gotta give us the fuckin' money! You gotta!'

'Craig, I'm sorry, I've discussed it with the partnership. We can't.'

'Why the hell not?'

He took a couple of steps forwards and stared up at me. He was only five feet six inches tall, but he worked out regularly. He looked more like a squaddie than a brilliant coder. He was strong and tough, and very, very angry.

I groped for words. 'We feel that the market has changed. It's become more competitive. Too many companies are out there and it's hard to tell who the winner will be.'

'Jesus, we've been through this a million times. You wanna know who's gonna be the winner? We are!'

Spittle darted from his lips as he pounded his chest with a meaty thumb. I was aware that outside the glassed-in office all the engineers had stopped their work. Some of them were drifting over to watch.

I wanted to tell him that I thought he was right, that Revere should have given him the money. But that would have been unprofessional and a betrayal of the partnership. Besides, it would have made a messy situation even messier. Gil was right: while I worked for the firm I had a duty to carry out their decisions. Whether I agreed with those decisions or not was between them and me.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'But there it is.'

'You can't do this, Simon. You're committed in the investment agreement.'

'Not quite.'

'It says if we meet the milestones, Revere will put in another three million bucks. We've met the milestones. Where's the money?'

'We don't feel that the ASIC has been tested sufficiently'

'That's crap! I'm satisfied, what more do you need?'

'We need it to be tested in real working conditions for a period of three months. To see whether it works in a real system.'

'That's impossible, and you know it! Anyway, I say it works fine, and that should be enough!'

Reluctantly I tossed across a copy of the investment agreement, with the words 'will be determined at the sole discretion of Revere Partners' highlighted in yellow.

Craig glanced at it and then scowled. Suddenly his finger jabbed the page. 'What about this then? "Such approval not to be unreasonably withheld." I'd say you assholes are being unreasonable.'

I sighed. 'Your lawyers can spend money with our lawyers discussing that if you like. It doesn't really matter. We'll win, and even if we don't, there are two more clauses we can use. Face it Craig, if we don't want to put in more money, we don't have to.'

Craig threw the agreement on to the table and moved over to the window overlooking a car park, and behind that the small ravine that was Hemlock Gorge.

'You gave me your word that we would get the money, Simon,' he said quietly, his back towards me.

'I know,' I replied. 'I haven't been able to deliver. I should never have made you a promise it wasn't in my power to keep.'

'I've put everything into this business, Simon,' Craig said. 'And not just all my money. I gave up a good well-paid job with stock options at a successful company. I hardly see Mary and the kids, now. And I'm not the only one. What about those guys out there?' He waved his arm towards the small crowd gawping at us through the windows of the conference room. 'I promised them Net Cop would be a success. That if they worked their asses off for a couple of years, it'd be worth their while. And if I have to let them down, because you've let me down, I'll…'

He stopped himself. He stood silently for several moments, rocking on the balls of his feet. He was a tight bundle of muscle in jeans, trainers and a black T-shirt with a white dumbbell across his chest.

'Who was it, Simon?'

'What do you mean?'

'Which one was it? Who turned us down? Gil Appleby? Frank Cook? That woman, whatever her name is? The Indian guy?'

I was impressed with Craig's memory of the people who had heard him present earlier that year.

'It was a partnership decision. A consensus.'

Craig spun round. 'Don't give me that bullshit! You at least owe me the truth on this one. Now, who was it?'

He was right. Loyalty to the firm could only stretch so far. I owed as much, or more, to Craig.

'Frank Cook,' I said.

'The bastard! The fuckin' bastard!' Craig shook his head.

'Craig,' I said.

'Yeah, what?'

'You'll get the money.'

'Oh, please! We're screwed, and you screwed us.'

'It's a great opportunity for someone.'

'Oh yeah. Like, some other VC is just gonna leap in with a ton of money once you guys have pulled out. Come on!' Craig's face was filled with contempt.

'You can try. I'll give you the best reference I can.'

'Like they're gonna call you! They're gonna talk to Frank Cook, and you know what that cocksucker's gonna say.'

Craig was right. Frank would make clear his reasons why Revere had pulled out. Craig glared at me, his small blue eyes burning underneath the folds of his brow, his short hair bristling. 'You make me sick, you know that? Just get outta here.'

'Craig, I can help-'

'Just get out!' he screamed.

I nodded slowly and left, passing a series of angry, puzzled faces on my way out. I managed to keep my expression firm until I was safely outside the building. But as the door shut behind me, I slumped back against the wall, cursing Gil and Revere and myself. I vowed never to get myself into that situation again.

When I arrived back at the office, Daniel was scanning a list of stock prices on his computer. He had an ability to recall price histories for certain stocks going back years, just from looking at them every day.

Daniel and I had hardly known each other at business school. He did well in class, and he talked a lot about his investments. For the most part these seemed to be remarkably successful. He had an uncanny knack for spotting take-overs be fore they would happen, and for anticipating the rapidly changing fads of technology investors. He made no secret that his ambition was to make many millions very quickly, and he saw the stock market as the quickest way to that end. He had supreme confidence in his own investment abilities, but all the risks he took were carefully calculated.

Revere had liked the look of him, and he had liked the look of venture capital, although, as he once told me, this was as much because it would give him better information about the markets as because he thought he would make big money out of it directly.

'Craig wasn't too happy, huh?' He looked up from his paper. 'Did he try to kill you?'

'Nearly,' I said.

'Did you use that army self-defence shit on him?'

'No, Daniel. I just stood there and tried to be calm. I think I succeeded.'

'So, what are you going to do?' asked John.

I slumped into my chair. 'I don't know.'

'Tea?' John asked.

I nodded. 'Thanks.'

He was back a couple of minutes later with a cup of tea for me and some complicated latte-type coffee for himself.

'What about me?' squawked Daniel.

John struck his forehead. 'Darn it,' he said. 'I've forgotten again.'

'Huh!'

John looked over Daniel's shoulder at the stock quotes on his machine.

'Forty-three and a quarter, eh?'

We all knew what he was looking at. It was the same little number everyone at Revere looked at every day. The BioOne stock price.

'Edging up,' said Daniel.

John picked up a stack of papers from his desk, and dumped it on Daniel's. 'Enjoy.'

It was the 'cold deals' pile. These were the deals that arrived in the mail from the wide world of wacky inventors and crazy dreamers. There was a virtual pile, just as high, in our computer system, that had been received electronically.

Daniel groaned. 'OK. But I'm not going to read them. I find my rejection letter is so much more polite if I don't.'

'You have to read them. It's your turn this week. Gil insists.'

'All right.' Daniel grabbed the pile of letters and business plans, and began to go through it. 'They're all losers anyway.'

'You don't know that,' said John.

'Oh, come on. This is all crap.' Daniel tapped a business plan in front of him. 'Look, this is from a guy who wants to sell UFO scanners over the Internet.'

'I got that wind-power generation deal from the cold pile,' John said.

Daniel rolled his eyes. 'Precisely.' He had a point. Although John had been very excited about the wind-power deal, Gil had dismissed it out of hand.

'At least I've got an open mind,' John said.

'Wide open,' muttered Daniel.

I tried to concentrate on work, but it was impossible. I was being attacked from all sides. Firstly by Frank and the other partners, then by Craig. Craig I could forgive. Frank I couldn't.

Frank and I had immediately liked each other when he had interviewed me for a job at Revere. Once I had joined the firm, we had worked well together, and he had watched my developing relationship with his daughter with approval. It was only in the last six months, since the wedding, that his attitude to me had cooled.

He was besotted with Lisa, and had missed her badly when she had moved to California with her mother when she was fourteen. When she returned to Boston to work for a small biotechnology company they saw a lot of each other. At first I fitted into this arrangement very well, but somehow, once Lisa and I were married, things changed. Invitations to spend the weekend with him at his house by the shore had previously been haphazard and informal, but now they became more insistent. When I came too, I no longer felt welcome, and I was sure that Frank engineered times for him and Lisa to meet up when he knew I couldn't be there.

In a way, I understood his feelings. Belatedly, he had realized that once Lisa married me, he would cease to be the most important man in her life. This bothered him. And he bothered me. Lisa and I both worked hard, and I wanted to spend what little free time we had alone with her.

Frank's suspicions of Diane hadn't helped. To his fear of losing his daughter, and his jealousy of the time I spent with her, was now added concern that she might be mistreated by a philandering husband.

I might understand all this. But I didn't like it. Especially when it messed up my work. I needed to talk to him.

He was in his office. All the partners had their own, expensively kitted out with the mixture of high-technology and old furniture that Gil believed gave the impression of a leading venture-capital firm with money: sleek computers, old prints, discreet VCRs, leather chairs, conference phones, dark wood tables.

He was on the phone, and he waved me to a chair in front of his desk.

I waited. He continued talking, avoiding my eye. He moved his arms for emphasis as he spoke. The shrugs, the hand movements, the expressions were the only signs of his Jewish ancestry, and the only resemblance to Lisa I recognized in him. He looked the archetypal White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, while she took after her mother, with her dark hair and eyes and her sharp features. His father, a prosperous Boston doctor, had been born Koch and changed his name to Cook in a mostly successful effort to blend into the community around him.

At work, we had always treated each other as colleagues, or at any rate partner and associate.

Until now.

He eventually finished his phone call, and turned to me.

'I'd like to talk about this morning,' I began.

'There's nothing to say. We said it all at the meeting.'

'I don't think so. There's more to it than that.'

'You were wrong. You made a mistake. You'll learn.'

'I know you saw me having dinner with Diane.'

He leaned forward. 'Simon, understand this. Your marriage to my daughter has no bearing on how I treat you at work, and I resent the implication that it does.'

'What else am I supposed to think? We did that deal together. Nothing's changed, Craig's doing brilliantly, all the milestones we set have been met.'

'I disagree, Simon. As I said this morning, I think plenty has changed. And I'm beginning to have my doubts about Craig. All I was doing was preventing the firm from making a bad investment. It was a judgement call. I made the right one, you made the wrong one. Now, I don't want to have any more of this conversation.'

'Oh, come on,' I said. 'You might have disagreed with me, but there was no need to humiliate me-'

'I said, I don't want to have this conversation.' He looked down to the papers on his desk.

I knew there was more I should say, more that had to be said. But Frank didn't want to hear it.

'You may not want to talk about it now, but this is something we'll have to sort out some time,' I said as I left the room.

I swore under my breath as I made my way back to my desk. Diane passed me in the corridor.

'Cheer up,' she said.

'Why? I've just screwed everything up here.'

'No, you haven't. Here, come into my office.'

I followed her through a door a couple of paces further down the corridor. She closed it behind me. Her office was smaller than Frank's, and tidier. Cool, crisp and modern.

I slumped heavily into an armchair and put my face in my hands. She sat on the sofa opposite me, relaxed, an encouraging half-smile on her lips. Through my fingers I could glimpse her long legs, resting against the side of the sofa. Lisa was right. She was undeniably attractive.

'Everyone has a really bad day sometime in every firm,' she said. 'You have to live with it. It's like a rite of passage. You've had your good deal with PC Homelease. Now you've got your bad one. They'll all be watching how you handle it, you know. If you bounce back, they'll think the better of you.'

'We'll see,' I said. 'Thank you for your support in there, by the way.'

'I thought you made the right call. So I had to say so.' She smiled quickly. 'Now,' she got up and took a sheaf of papers from her desk. 'Take a look at this for me. It's a company called Tetracom. They have a new idea for microwave filters for cellular telephone networks. The technology looks very interesting to me. I've scheduled a trip to see them in Cincinnati next Thursday and Friday. Can you make it?'

I was just about to say 'yes, of course', when I hesitated. An overnight trip with Diane, however innocuous, would be bad timing.

'Um, I don't think I'll be able to,' I said. 'This Net Cop business is going to take some sorting out.'

'Oh, come on. It's only a day and a half. And I'd like you to work on it. I think we make a good team.'

When a partner specifically wanted you to work on something it was just stupid to refuse.

'Do you have a problem with travelling with me?' Diane looked at me sharply.

She was standing there, soberly dressed, next to her large desk, a partner of the firm I worked for. Telecoms was her area of expertise, and it was a field I was trying to specialize in myself. How could I have a problem travelling with her?

'No, of course not. I'll do my best.'

'Good. I'll have a word with Gil if Net Cop is a problem. This is an important deal you know'

I smiled and left.

'I saw you slinking into Diane's office,' Daniel said as I returned to my desk. 'You two sure are spending some quality time together.'

'She's just trying to find out how well hung you are, Daniel,' I said. 'But don't worry, I won't tell her. I promise.'

'Tell her that's something she's welcome to figure out for herself,' said Daniel, smiling at the rows of numbers on his computer screen. 'Any time.'