It was ninetyminutes.com’s first formal board meeting, although of the four directors only Patrick Hoyle was wearing a suit, a huge baggy thing that flapped around his enormous body. Our new chairman was dressed all in black, the same as his son. He was in a great mood: he clearly liked the internet lifestyle.
Tony had invested two million pounds of capital for eighty per cent of Ninetyminutes, leaving the rest of us to split the remaining twenty per cent amongst us, with Guy rightly receiving the lion’s share. It was a bad deal for us, but we had had no choice. Mel had helped us in the negotiations, behaving totally professionally towards Tony throughout. But it made little difference. Tony had us by the balls and he squeezed. The worst thing was, he seemed to enjoy it. All in all a very different experience from my own father’s investment.
‘No problems at all?’ he asked.
‘Oh, there were problems. But we fixed them. The site hasn’t fallen over once since we launched ten days ago. Which is more than I can say for some of the staff. We pushed them pretty hard.’
‘So, if I type www.ninetyminutes.com into my computer, what happens?’
‘I didn’t know you could type, Dad.’
‘Of course I can bloody type!’ But Tony allowed himself a quick smile, caught up in Guy’s enthusiasm.
‘Sorry. Try it,’ said Guy, pushing his own laptop towards his father. Tony laboriously pecked out the letters and the by-now familiar Ninetyminutes logo floated to the surface. Guy guided Tony around the site, while Hoyle watched over their shoulders.
‘You know, this is really good,’ Tony said.
‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘And it’s going to get better.’
‘Has anyone out there noticed us?’ he asked, still clicking away at the laptop.
‘There’s been some excellent press coverage.’ Guy handed round a sheaf of articles for everyone to look at. ‘And we’ve had some outstanding reviews of our site on-line. We expect more of those over the next few weeks.’
Tony scanned the reviews. ‘ “The best soccer site on the web by miles.” That’s not bad for your first week.’
‘There’s still a lot to do,’ Guy said. ‘We’re talking to one of the offshore bookmakers for on-line betting. That should be a money-spinner. And we’re recruiting. New writers, a couple of programmers to help Owen and Sanjay, and some admin people. We’ve also had interest from our advertising agency about selling space on the site. Remember, that’s something we wanted to hold off doing until we could show people what we’ve got.’
‘It would be nice to see some revenues,’ said Tony.
‘Absolutely. And we’re making progress on the retailing side.’
Tony pushed the reviews and Guy’s laptop away and picked up the financial attachments to the board papers. He frowned.
‘Amy has a team of designers working on a range of sports-casual clothing,’ Guy went on. ‘She’s lined up suppliers in the UK and Portugal.’
‘Wouldn’t the Far East be cheaper?’
‘We need the flexibility of rapid turnaround times for orders and new designs. Whatever happens when we start selling our own-label stuff, it’s going to happen quickly, and we’ll need to respond quickly. She’s also negotiating deals with the suppliers of club and national strips and memorabilia.’
‘It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?’
‘There are long lead-times. We need to be ready.’
‘It all sounds exciting,’ Tony said. ‘Tell us how we’re going to pay for it, David.’
I ran through the numbers, which were set out amongst the board papers. I’d worked hard on them, and I was pleased with the result.
When I finished, there was silence. Tony was staring at me, absentmindedly tapping a pen against his chin. I tried to catch his eye and smile. His expression remained stony. Hoyle was watching his client closely. He knew him better than me, and he knew something was up.
I tried to remain calm, but inside alarm bells were ringing. What had I said wrong? What had I missed? Why was Tony so warm to his son and so cold to me? Did this still have something to do with Dominique?
Eventually Guy cut in. ‘Thank you, David. As you can see, we are being prudent with our cash, and we’re keeping within budget.’
‘We might be within budget, but we’re not making any money. Are we, David?’ There was an edge to Tony’s voice.
‘Not yet, no,’ I admitted. ‘But at this stage in Ninetyminutes’ life we should be investing in the business.’
‘We’re making losses, with no prospect of that changing. I don’t call that “investing in the business”. I call that spending more than we earn.’
Anger flashed inside me. My professional pride was hurt. I was the accountant, what did he mean by lecturing me? ‘This is a start-up,’ I snapped. ‘What do you expect?’
Tony raised his eyebrows. He slowly moved his gaze to Guy and then back to me.
‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘Till next month. I’m glad the site is going so well. Congratulations.’ This was aimed more towards Guy than me. ‘Perhaps at our next meeting we can go a little bit further into our financial strategy.’
That sounded ominous, but I wasn’t as concerned as perhaps I should have been. It had been an uncomfortable meeting, and I had let Tony get to me for a brief moment, but I had survived. I had received a cooling rather than a roasting. That I could learn to handle, I thought. It was just a question of attitude.
We soon forgot about our chairman. Ninetyminutes was buzzing, and the loudest buzzing came from Guy. He was everywhere. If he didn’t have the ideas himself he encouraged the other people in the team to have them. He truly was inspirational. Decisions were made in a matter of seconds, all by Guy. His yardstick was, would a certain idea get us closer to being the number-one site in Europe? If it did, we went ahead with it. If it didn’t, we forgot it and moved on to the next thing.
Despite the site’s initial success, Guy was unhappy with it. Gaz’s ideas were good, his stories were brilliant and Mandrill’s design was better than anything else out there. But in Guy’s view the site lacked something, although it was difficult to get him to pin down exactly what. After long discussions into the night we decided that what we needed was someone to pull all these elements together and organize them. But what kind of person? And where could we find them?
We didn’t have the time to advertise and we didn’t have the money for a headhunter. Then I thought of Ingrid. Neither of us had seen her for seven years, but she had been working in magazine publishing then. If she didn’t know anyone herself, she might at least help us identify the kind of person we should be looking for and suggest where we might find them. If she’d talk to us.
I dug out her number from an old address book and called her up. She was surprised to hear from me, but she agreed to have lunch with us the next day.
We met at a small pizza place near her office on the South Bank. She was cool, composed and confident. She looked a little older, lines were beginning to show around her mouth and pale-blue eyes, smile lines. Her chestnut-brown hair was cut shorter, and she wore an elegant but informal trouser suit. Jade earrings dangled from her ears. She looked poised and in control. And amused.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘You two joining up to become dot-commers. A dissolute actor and a buttoned-up chartered accountant.’
‘Killer combination,’ said Guy with a smile. ‘And unique.’
I wasn’t sure I quite liked the description of myself as a ‘buttoned-up accountant’, but I didn’t quibble. Suave merchant banker, perhaps? But of course one of the reasons I was doing this was to lose the accountant label.
‘I almost didn’t recognize you. Guy has no signs of a hangover and you seem to have lost your suit, David. And your hair.’