I was actually surprised by the downward progression of these events, however entertaining, and let out an audible, “Jesus,” for good measure.
“It was consensual, of course, but she was seventeen. We have an IPO in six weeks and this is a real problem,” said Alan, with no particular irony. “These guys are oblivious to their predicament. We are not dealing with grownups, Mark. Lars is a renegade; three sheets and an overdose from a blackout. Fung just turned eighteen. I don’t really know. The P.R. girl—Fung’s sister, Li, I think she is called—she has a law degree from Stanford, speaks four languages, has to be the smartest person in the room, but I want some adult supervision to see us through the IPO.”
“What about the state AG stuff?” I asked.
“Absolutely mum, well, wait—and one of our partners knows the Governor well, so we are going through that channel.”
Despite his detectable anger, the tone of Alan’s voice did not fluctuate during the entire call.
“At first we thought the investigation was a rumor floated by a rival technology, some chaff to derail the IPO. But it’s legit. Not at all a rumor. We’ve got no response from Sacramento and we have a roadshow about to start in three weeks. Fung has committed several press atrocities, generally speaking, about OneSpeak, and I cannot imagine what she will say or do when the questions come about all this. By the way, you should know that she is part of the open source crowd, so she has an antipathy to ‘no comment.’ She argues it’s a ‘withholding of the truth.’”
Hawthorne’s head peered around my now cracked door, a thumbs up, then a thumbs down, then a neutral expression, which I quickly knocked back to thumbs up with a brisk head nod, then he made that greasy gesture bouncers make when demanding a little tip, the rapid sandpapering of thumb over forefinger.
He moved fully into the office now and closed the door, stood somewhat appraisingly, arms crossed and legs wide, just to spectate and take in the sale.
I instinctively raised my voice as if he were joining in the conversation, but, when I noticed it, I lowered it just as quickly.
“Listen: sharing the truth in the press is rarely helpful. Perhaps you can get her just to say, ‘I don’t know, can I get back to you?’ and hope she flakes out and forgets.” I winced a little at this, feeling like I had too carelessly revealed a frank opinion.
Hawthorne sat down on the sofa and opened The New Yorker and a canister of marcona almonds from Dean & Deluca.
Alan was too wound up to notice my carelessness, his anger manifesting as a slight shift in cadence.
“Look, Mark, this is why we called you. We want a pro to spearhead things for a while. Last week, after the employees lobbied for it, they installed Braille newspapers over the urinals in the men’s room. Well, that’s in the press now. I think Mashable ran the headline, ‘The Blind Translating to the Blind.’ Lars thought it was funny. Fung is an amateur ornithologist, spends her afternoons taking auspices. They need to hear from an outsider that the situation is grave. They need to commit to a program, stop speaking ad hoc to the press on their cell phones from Cozumel or Kauai, or wherever it is they go scuba diving. Did I mention that Lars got Fung into that last month? She ended up in a hyperbaric chamber after her first dive—too deep too quickly—and spent twelve hours in a three-bed Mexican hospital. Lars sat vigil, doing blog posts from her bedside and posting recovery updates on Twitter. Motherfucking incredible.”
I had had the phone on speaker by the time he got to scuba diving and Hawthorne was in stitches, spilling almonds on the sofa, the magazine folded in his lap, his shoulders bouncing with silent laughter.
There was a long pause, and, next, a query for a contract and a price.
I knew how this would all transpire, the flights to the west coast away from Colin, the trains up the east coast, wrinkled suits; I looked out the window at the rain, registered a microburst of depression; it was not even ten thirty in the morning; my next pill wasn’t until two.
Alan was breathing into the phone. I closed the laptop, conjuring up all ways that Lars and Fung would obliterate my solitude, impose an absence on Colin. When I evaluated what all of that was worth, and calculated the value of what my experience and knowhow would bring to the IPO, purported by Alan to haul in around $4 billion in new capital, and considered how a bad press run for an IPO could shear a good $1.5 billion off that opening day valuation, a shit blog here, a shit CNBC interview there, I arrived at a radical price I felt was worth it for renting out my expertise (even if this triage could be done easily enough). I felt all the internal gusts blowing, couldn’t stop myself from getting right to it.
“This is an unusual case, we provide an exceptional service, and there is no number.” Hawthorne looked up.
“I’m sorry?”
“You are obviously familiar with the notion of goodwill?”
“Obviously.”
“Then you know our service is an intangible, akin to goodwill.”
“Yes.”
“To enable OneSpeak to get, hitch free, to IPO, raise $4 billion, hold that value and expand it—that holds a value that cannot be expressed through a retainer, which is how we work with most clients, but not in the case of IPOs.”
“Alright…”
“The price is going to need to be shares of the IPO, at a strike price of $12.50 per share.”
“That’s four dollars beneath the IPO price.”
“I am aware. And we will need a substantial tranche of shares, of course, exercisable immediately and fully vested.” The ball was now entering the strike zone.
“And precisely how many shares do we need to pay to get P.R.?” Alan’s voice had turned snarky. At that moment, an NHL alert materialized across the top edge of my iPhone: the Boston Bruins had just extended an important left winger through the 2020–21 season.
“We’d take on OneSpeak in exchange for one million shares in the company.”
There was a pause, a split second passed, and Alan had done the math. “I really…I mean that is offensively insane. Absolutely ridiculous.”
I held the silence. I smiled at the rain that was now heavier, drumming the window panes. Hawthorne had put down the magazine completely.
“This is truly offensive.” Alan was chuckling now. “The IPO price is fourteen dollars per share. Under normal circumstances the stock will double in less than six months. I really cannot believe you are asking for tens of millions of dollars to do press releases and interviews. This conversation is unbelievably disappointing.”
“I understand. I wish you luck, then,” I said, and hung up.
There was a brief pause, then Hawthorne and I debated the pros and cons of promoting one of the firm’s plucky vice presidents, Joel James, largely disliked by his peers for his coveted blue badge on his Twitter handle that certified his identity as the real Joel James, an artifact of his previous stint as an editor at a Silicon Valley website.