The alarm blasted into life at six o’clock on the dot, unleashing a barrage of Peter Frampton guitar licks from the local seventies station. Todd and Peter had fallen asleep on the one bed with their clothes on. Paul was still splayed out on the couch, except this time he really was asleep. Todd reached out and slapped around the table until he finally hit the alarm clock. It went off with a satisfying thunk.
Paul stumbled into the room, rubbing the dirt from his eyes. “Well, did we get the blessed thing born last night or not?”
Peter sat up on the bed. “Well, we have twelve good slides, plus the three engineering slides that you provided. Somehow, we are going to have to talk enough to stretch it out to at least an hour. Believe it or not, I actually think we are close to accomplishing that.”
Paul snorted. “This I will believe when I see it.” He grabbed the bag lying at his feet and stumbled into the bathroom. “Might as well be clean shaven for my execution.”
Peter and Todd practically jumped out of their shoes as the phone suddenly blared forth from the table. Peter held one hand over his heart and picked up the phone with the other. “Hello?”
Peter nodded and mumbled things for a minute as Todd looked on curiously. Peter finally hung up the phone and looked over at Todd. “Well, the plot thickens. That was Pat Barker. He has rounded up the senior partners at his firm. It seems we have been granted an audience.” He raised his eyebrows.
Todd was shaking his head. “There is no way we can meet with these guys after Vincent and his mob. You know they will want to close us on the spot.”
“Well, what happens if we decided to meet with them before?”
Todd practically shrieked. “When? It’s six fifteen in the bloody morning. We are due back at their suite at nine. When in God’s name are we supposed to meet with them?”
“They just offered to meet us at eight o’clock.”
Todd couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, this is priceless. We are supposed to run from one VC to another just like that. Don’t they frown on that kind of behavior? They don’t exactly like to feel that they are being played against each other.”
Peter shrugged. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
Just then Paul walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “So, did I miss anything?”
Todd plopped back down on the bed. “Oh, Peter here is seeing how many VCs he can piss off in the shortest period of time. He now is trying to book us with Pat Barker’s firm at eight o’clock. For those of you scoring at home that is exactly one hour before we go before Mount Vincent.”
Paul ran his towel through his hair as he pawed through his bag. “Well, if we are going to go down, we might as well take everyone with us.”
“Right,” scowled Todd. “Group oblivion. Anyone have any idea how long it is going to take before Laz finds out about all this? At this rate we are going to have investors lining up outside our door waiting to take numbers.”
Peter held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa. Down there, killer. Hopefully Laz finds out when we tell him this evening after receiving a big check from someone. And I personally feel that having a stalking horse can only do good things for our valuation. So I say let’s meet with Pat and his crew and see what they say. We don’t have to show them the slides, just talk with them.”
Todd grumbled to no one in particular for a moment, and then grudgingly nodded. “Okay, but I am not paying. No way I should be responsible for my own last meal.”
The three got off the elevator and slunk along the wall towards the restaurant on the main floor. Although it was now a little before eight o’clock in the morning, the casino was already in full swing. As they skirted along the edge of the floor, they had the distinct feeling that everyone could see them. This did not make them feel any better about their situation. The specter of Lazarus almost walking into them last night was still fresh in all of their minds. They safely arrived, and Peter leaned in before he spoke conspiratorially to the host. “Pat Barker’s table, please.”
The host blasted them a megawatt smile and cheerfully grabbed three menus. In a voice too loud for all of them, she blared out, “Great! Mr. Barker is already waiting for you.” It sounded like it had just been announced over the PA.
They sneaked over to the table, where they found Pat with the top partners from his firm. They all sprung up like hyper kinetic jackrabbits. They were uniformly wearing “VC Camo.” This was clothing worn to make the VC seem more technically savvy, engineer friendly and “with it” than he actually was. Almost without fail, the outfit consisted of khakis, loafers and a polo shirt. Well, it almost was the ticket. There was a moment of silence as the partners all beamed at them. Finally one of the partners spoke. “Well, I can’t tell you how happy we are that you agreed to meet with us again. We were very upset that our previous meeting was cut short.”
Pat leaned in for the first salvo. “Guys, we know that you are talking to Vincent, and we know what you are talking about.” This was probably not entirely true, but it made good theater. “We are ready to capitalize you guys, and I’m sure everyone else in the hotel has already made the same offer. But what we have that none of them have is the retail side. We can get you out the other end, and we can get you out loud. You understand what I’m talking about?”
Peter understood explicitly. Pat’s firm was known for punching companies into the IPO track as fast as possible, sometimes faster than was advisable. Peter knew this, and he also knew where to hurt them. “Well, guys, I appreciate the offer, but that isn’t really what we are concentrating on right now. I mean, the last thing we want to do is wind up as another Media Vision.”
The VCs collectively flinched. Peter had just dropped a smart bomb right down the chimney. Media Vision was one of the great disaster companies of the nineties. They had been one of the louder IPOs of the year, launching off like a rocket on the initial day, and heading straight up from there. This was where the short sellers had then crawled out of their burrows and swung into action. Short sellers were stock traders that bet that a stock would go down instead of up, selling a stock heavily on the bet they could buy it back later at a lower price. Short sellers by definition spend every waking moment scouring the country for companies that were too good to be true. Media Vision smelled like an all-American disaster to them, and they had latched onto it almost immediately. They then created an enormous float of shorted stock, and watched gleefully as the company’s fundamentals slowly went to hell in a hand basket. The company had responded by doing a secondary offering to sell more stock. Then they did a debt offering.
And then they declared bankruptcy.
Then the allegations of fraud and fiscal deceit started. Then the secret warehouses of unsold products were discovered. The short sellers danced around the now twitching carcass of the company and rejoiced as the stock dropped, dropped and dropped even more. And people started asking the inevitable question: How much did the investment banks that led the two offerings know?
People went back and perused the offerings again. And inconsistencies started appearing. And questions started being asked. And the top question was this: If the underwriter knew about all the problems (and everyone immediately assumed they did) how come they went ahead and ripped off not one but two questionable offerings?
The fees, of course. Each offering garnered large and attractive fees for the company. And ever since then, everyone kept both eyes firmly on the road to make sure that they didn’t turn out as the next Media Vision.
The VCs hemmed and hawed and made boisterous noises to make up for the suddenly uncomfortable situation. Peter had done this on purpose to cut Barker off at the pass. His senior partner rode in to save him. He put his hand on Barker’s shoulder. “Peter, you’ll have to forgive our rather exuberant junior partner. We have no intention of dragging you into a situation where you would be uncomfortable. What we are interested in is what your plans are and how we can help. You know, we were very disappointed that we didn’t have an opportunity to invest in you last time..”
Peter wasn’t quite sure if this was true or not. The question was now how much he could get from them for the smallest amount of information. Todd and Paul were looking to him for guidance. Paul was probably the clue to all this. Paul could talk for hours to the VCs, and have them understand completely nothing of what he was saying. However it would sound as impressive as hell. Yup, the strategy was to go right over their heads. He turned to Paul. “Well, we have been talking all night about our development track, and the person best suited to talk about that is probably Paul here. He is our top coder and really the owner of the architecture. Paul, why don’t you give these folks a quick synopsis on our theories of distributed objects.”
Paul looked shocked. “You mean you want me too...what exactly do you want me to..."
Peter smiled. “Just give them the quick 30,000 foot view. These guys are pretty technologically savvy, so you don’t need to pull any punches.” Peter winked at Paul so only he could see it. The VCs smiled broadly at the perceived complement from Peter, looking knowledgeably at each other, and oblivious to the fact that they had just excused themselves from the conversation. Paul laid right into them.
“Great. Well, we have been looking at the problems inherent in parsing and delivering distributed shared object within a widely-distributed client-server environment. And we have been looking at everything that would effect that object being quickly and efficiently distributed. That includes theories on packets, payloads, headers, security callbacks, distributed ownership and all the standard stuff.”
The VCs all nodded their heads in unison. They had to, since Paul maliciously stuck the phrase “standard stuff” at the end of the sentence. Paul blasted along for another five minutes, using every obscure engineering concept and phrase he could think of, and even making some up along the way, to the amusement of Peter and Todd. The VCs had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Finally Peter mercifully stepped in. “Well, I think we have opened the kimono wide enough.” He smiled at the VCs. “I think Paul’s given you a pretty concise idea of the engineering assets we are planning to put into place in this company. These pieces of technology will form the foundation of everything else we will build on top of it. It actually is quite elegant.”
The senior partner attempted to rally back into the conversation here. “Well, Peter, this is all very impressive. Of course we would have to do a little more due diligence, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say we would like to invest in you. Would it possible for you to come by our offices and give us a more formal presentation next week when we all get back?”
Peter silently sighed to himself. It had played out perfectly. He now had the threat of this company investing, but the follow-up meeting placed them firmly behind Vincent and his pack. The stalking horse was in place. “Yes, that would be fine. Why don’t we talk on Monday.” Peter stood up, to be followed by Paul and Todd. “I’m sorry to eat and run like this, but we were working on our business plan this morning, and we need to get back to it.”
The VCs all rose in unison, Hands were once again thrust in their direction. “Well, get that plan done so we can take a look at it next week,” said Pat.
“No problem,” said Peter.
They didn’t stand a chance.