Todd and Susan have the flu, so I guess we're all doomed for it now. And Ethan's been acting weird all week. Our bank account must be running on fumes again.
unraveled brown cassette tape on the freeway
Staples CK-one
PIN number basketball hoop
If we were machines,
have the gift of being eternal and I want you to understand
we'd
TUESDAY
Everybody's flu-ridden today except for Ethan and me. Ethan asked me to accompany him up to Electronic Arts in San Mateo, and then down to a VC meeting out at the Venture Capital mall at the corner of the 280 and Sand Hill Road-in his ruby red Ferrari.
"The Ferrari is like a rite of passage here for new money. You buy one at 26, get it out of your system, flip it for a gray Lexus or Infiniti, and then you drive gray sedans the rest of your life. I keep mine because I can't afford anything else at the moment, and I can't afford the capital gains taxes if I sold it. I should get one of those 'don't laugh: at least it's paid for' bumper stickers. Nobody would appreciate the irony that I'm holding on by my teeth."
We roared south past the rolling hills that oozed trees and fog. I looked down at the palm of my hand, slapped it, and said, "Hey, Ethan-I'm looking at my sympathy-o-meter, and the needle isn't moving."
"It's the Valley, pal-think sideways. This is the Lexus Freeway, the most scenic in America."
I told Ethan about the book on freeways I had read, Robert F. Baker's Handbook of Highway Engineering; Ethan in turn told me that 280-the Lexus Freeway-is also nicknamed the Mensa Freeway.
I looked in the glove compartment and there was a bottle of Maalox cherry. Ethan said, "I keep Maalox in the glove compartment of the car, and sometimes I swig it like a wino in parking lots before meetings. I once walked into this meeting with dried white Maalox powder caked on my lips and everybody thought it was coke or something. I told them it was Pixy Stix and they said, oh, how cute, but they still thought I was coked out. Man, if they only knew the truth-that a Pixy stick would burn a crater in my stomach like Mt. Saint Helens."
Then we got into a discussion about volcanoes, and the year Mt. Saint Helens erupted and that old guy who lived on top of the mountain, who was all crotchety, and wouldn't leave, and everybody thought he was a real individual-and then he got creamed when the mountain blew. And this got me thinking of all the people at IBM, and I got to thinking about Dad and ...
This is my first-ever VC meeting. Ethan has attended hundreds of them during his Valley career. Apparently, the Monday Partner's Meeting is a Silicon Valley tradition, according to Ethan. They mostly occur up at the venture capital "mall" at the corner of Sand Hill Road and Interstate 280. Monday is when partners agree to agree. And Tuesday is when the decisions are acted upon. ,Fifteen years in the business have loaned Ethan a rote tour-guidish quality. Humming up the 280, he further briefed me on the situation:
"Initial presentations are made by capital seekers. If their idea seems promising, then there's a callback for a broader presentation-not unlike Broadway.
"The VC team by then will have run due-diligence checks- spoken with insiders who have provided background on an idea-its suitability or marketability-as well as checked the technical robustness of the idea. Essentially, they must know what is the significance or defensibility of the technology underlying the idea? What is the overall viability of the idea. What do you have that the others don't? Is the necessary technical 'acumen on the team? Michael and I have been through this already. Today is the callback.
''We passed all of the techie checks, but the VC firms aren't quite sure about Oop!’s marketability. With round-one seed capital, all the risk is ahead of you. Plus, software is a consumer, not a corporate business now it's 10,000 units off to CompUSA instead of one jumbo unit to Delta Airlines or National Cash Register.
"This isn't good for us, because Silicon Valley firms have little or no experience with Procter & Gamble-style focus grouping, but they won't admit it So they pose as multimedia visionaries instead. They might as well be slitting open a sheep and reading the entrails. It's a big exercise in chain-yanking. Let the floor show begin!"
We arrived and got out of the car. "Ethan, here-some leaves have fallen on your shoulder." I snowplowed away drifts of dandruff from his suit. "There," I said, "all set."
(Condensed Version ...Venture Capital Meeting (My First [and Last])
1) Me: (I'm dressed like an outpatient; these VC people are dressed like they're about to whisper a deal into David Geffen's left ear. Why didn't Ethan dress. me properly? He began flaking the moment we walked in the doorway. His shoulders!) "Hello."
2) VC Woman with Barbra-Streisand-in-Concert Hairdo:
"Investors want to see a committed, marketing-sensitive visionary at the product's helm." (Who the heck is that. . . Michael? Marketing Sensitive?)
3) Me: (Nodding and seeming interested) "Hmmm ...."
4) A different VC with an eerie resemblance to Barry Diller:
"One of the main reasons people start companies is to control their environment and the people they work with." Michael nods. Ethan agrees.
5) Richie Rich Boomersomething with loud Hermes tie: silence
6) Barbra: (earnestly) "Is there-an opening for world class leadership in this product's area?"
7) Barry: "Start-ups appeal either to jaded cynics-because they know the way things really work-or to the totally naive-because they don't. Which are you?"
8) Ethan:
"We're that irreducible 5 percent of talented people-our culture's pearl divers."
9) Young VC guy, who would be the same age as Rosemary's Baby: "You'll need more than lots of pearl divers . . ." (smug titters) "You need focus groups. People surprise you. They tell you that what you thought was worth $99 is only worth $29."
10) Barry: Sugarishly: "We have to function as parents to new companies who are in the process of growing up."
11) Hermes tie: more silence
12) Ethan: "That's where / come in." (give prisoner last cigarette)
13) Ethan: (now on a roll) "VC was in a lull until spring of 1992, and then came" [awed pause] "convergence. Unless there's a breakthrough hit, by 1997, multimedia is going to be a leper industry. We have the missing killer app right here."
14) Barbra: "Yes, but as a VC firm we like to feel we're beyond 'the hit thing' now. In general, we don't like small, technology-oriented companies. There's nothing the world wants as little as a new technology company. If you give a company $2 million, they'll spend it all and never ship a profitable product."
15) Hermes tie: noise of his silence equals noise of his tie
16) Rosemary's Baby: "With a round-one seed, all of the risk is ahead of you."
17) Barry: "Frankly, we're not totally convinced you have a crew that can market your product, that is, should it even make it past beta."
18) Me: (Detached metaphysical perspective: as we speak, the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a quarter of a mile south, running underneath the Mensa Freeway, is quietly blowing up atoms into quarks and bosons and leptons and Fruity Pebbles.) "Hmmm."
19) Ethan: "Frankly," (Oooh -everybody's trying to compete with each other through overuse of the word frank) "I have brought four products to market myself. Four very successful products. (Unspoken sentiment hangs in the air like dying fart: "Yeah, but your companies all tanked within a year.") "Our staff is so dedicated to the project they are working without pay until an alpha version is ready."
20) Me: (Inside thought balloon above my head as Ethan looks at me with this big You're-fucked-and-you-have-no-choice'' in front of all these suits): "What do you mean working without pay?"