‘Well, we recognized you,’ said Guy.
‘It’s lucky you had the same phone number,’ I said. ‘Seven years on.’
‘Same number. Same flat. Same job, I’m afraid.’
‘That dull, huh?’ said Guy. And then, in response to Ingrid’s sharp look, ‘Just getting my own back.’
She smiled.
We ordered our pizzas, and caught up on what we each had been doing. Then Guy asked the question. ‘What do you think?’
‘Of your site?’
‘Yes.’
Ingrid put down her knife and fork, pondering the question for a few moments. ‘It’s good. I’m impressed. The design is excellent. I know nothing about football, but you’ve got some very good writers. Easy to load. No bugs that I could find. Not bad at all.’
Guy looked disappointed. ‘Nothing wrong with it, then?’
‘No. For an amateur site, it’s really first class.’
‘But it’s not an amateur site!’ Guy said, with too much vehemence.
‘Oops,’ Ingrid said. ‘I didn’t mean amateur. But you can tell it hasn’t been done by a professional media company.’
‘Why? The design’s OK, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. As I said, it’s very good. But the whole thing doesn’t quite hang together properly. It lacks coherence. It’s inconsistent in places, some things are a little difficult to find, everything is given equal weight.’
‘What do you mean, equal weight?’
‘Well, in a magazine it’s up to the editor to tell the reader what the really interesting stories are and make them easy to see. You can do that on the web, too, although most people don’t. But if you look at some of the good newspaper sites, they are carefully edited. If you know what you want, you can find it. If you just want to browse, the interesting stuff will be there for you.’
‘That’s it!’ said Guy, glancing at me in triumph. ‘That’s exactly what I was saying! So what can we do about it?’
‘You need someone to coordinate everything. Editor, publisher, call it what you like.’
‘Well? Is there anyone you know who might be able to help us? Or who would want to help us?’
Ingrid paused, as though flicking through a Rolodex in her head. ‘Maybe.’
‘Oh, yes?’
But Ingrid didn’t give us a name. At least not yet. ‘I still can’t get over you two teaming up. Despite my crack about chartered accountants, I’m not really surprised about David. But you, Guy? What about the late nights? The women? The drink?’
Guy took a sip of the sparkling water in front of him. ‘All in the past,’ he said with a grin. ‘Just ask Davo.’
Ingrid glanced at me. I nodded.
‘Seriously,’ Guy said. ‘I’ve changed since the last time you saw me. I’ve come to that point in my life where I want to prove that I’m not a loser, that I can create something worthwhile. I’ve worked hard at this. Fourteen-hour days, weekends, I haven’t had a holiday since I started this thing. And this is just the beginning. But I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. I really badly want this to work, Ingrid. And when I want something, I generally get it.’
Ingrid raised her eyebrows.
‘So who are you thinking of?’ I asked. ‘And do you think they’d do it?’
‘I think I do know the right person,’ said Ingrid. ‘But I’m not sure whether they’d do it or not.’
‘Tell them to spend a day with us,’ said Guy. ‘If they can’t get away from their job, there’s always Saturday. We’ll be in the office all day: Chelsea are playing away.’
‘All right.’
‘So who is it?’ Guy asked.
Ingrid smiled. ‘Me.’
Guy returned her smile. ‘In that case we’ll see you on Saturday.’
Ingrid came in that weekend. She clicked. Gaz liked her. Neil liked her. Even Owen liked her. At midday, Guy and I talked it over. After our lunch with her we’d both taken a look at the on-line magazine she had developed. It was aimed at professional women in their thirties, not exactly our target market. But it was smooth, sophisticated, interesting, seamless. It worked.
We offered her a job that Saturday lunch-time. She accepted it on Sunday. She took Monday to go into work to resign and she was in our office on Tuesday morning.
She turned out to be the final ingredient that made ninetyminutes.com really come alive. She listened to Gaz, encouraged him, and coaxed him into getting his ideas into some kind of priority. She talked to Owen about streamlining links and upload times, agreeing with all his concerns about scalability. And she told Mandrill what to do. It turned out that you can tell enigmatic men with goatees what to do, if you do it in the right way.
Under Ingrid’s guidance, our site was looking better and better. It was certainly an improvement on the other glitzy but clunky sites which inhabited the soccer space on the web. It looked professional. It looked a winner.
22
‘We need to move faster.’
I choked in my pint. Guy’s eyes were shining in that messianic way I was beginning to recognize whenever he was talking about Ninetyminutes’ future. ‘Move faster? You’re crazy. We can hardly keep up with things as they are now.’
We were in the Jerusalem Tavern, the pub just across the road from the office. It was half past nine, the end of another long day. But Guy had plenty of energy left.
‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got forward momentum. Ninetyminutes will go as far as we push it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know all that stuff we were going to do in our second year? Open European offices, the on-line retailing, our own-brand merchandising?’
‘Yes.’
‘We should start on it now.’
‘But we’ve only just got the site going!’
‘I know. But it’s like this. There’s a land grab going on at the moment. It’s like the Californian gold rush. Amazon have got books in the US and in Europe. Tesco are going for grocery sales. Egg for on-line banking. We have to get soccer. We’re going to overtake the others in the UK, and we’ve got to overtake them in Europe too.’
‘But how can we manage all that?’
‘We’ll manage it. All we have to do is think big and think fast.’
He was mad. But probably right. It had to be worth going for. ‘We’re going to need more money. Now.’
Guy nodded.
‘I think it’s still a bit early to go to the venture capitalists.’
‘We have to do it.’
‘Your father won’t like it.’
‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘But I’m not going to worry about that now. Look. Think through how much we need and then let’s work out how to get it.’
It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. I smiled. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll work on it.’
I had only just started to get down to the numbers when the phone rang. It was Henry Broughton-Jones.
‘I took a look at your site the other day,’ he said. ‘Very impressive.’
‘I’m glad you like it. Although I never had you down as much of a football fan, Henry.’
‘I prefer the horses. Just to watch, you understand. Look, do you fancy a spot of lunch?’
If you are the finance director of a start-up and a venture capitalist asks you out to lunch, then you say yes. Especially when he seems pleased that you can fit it in the next day.
He chose a smart restaurant just off Berkeley Square, the like of which I hadn’t lunched in since my Gurney Kroheim days. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a suit, but green cords, checked shirt and a blazer, with ox-blood brogues. Sort of Wall Street dress-down casual meets Cirencester Agricultural College. It didn’t quite work.
‘So what’s this, Henry?’ I said. ‘Dress-down Friday on a Wednesday?’