Learning Curve (9 page)

T
he Pacific Ocean was black and endless and almost indistinguishable from the sky, except for a few bright stars that burned their way through the scrim of the plane's thick windows. Sydney to Tokyo. Eleven hours—just two to go. Alison flicked on her overhead light and looked around.

Jenny Randall, eTernity's business development director and the only other woman on the road show, sat beside her, reading Jane Austen. “I figured this might be my only chance,” she'd said when Alison had first noticed it. The six men on the trip—four from eTernity, two from the underwriter—were all camped out asleep in various states of discomfort. Alison could hear at least two of them snoring. And after ten days and 23,000 miles into the twelve-day trip, the chartered airplane cabin smelled of dirty clothes, sweat, and over-applied deodorant—hotel sinks and laundry services notwithstanding.

Alison knew she should be asleep too—she'd been up for twenty-two hours—but after the raucous, upbeat presentation in Australia, she was still pumped with adrenalin.
Can this IPO really happen?
she asked herself. More important now, could it really be as big as some analysts were predicting—$45 per share? Nobody in tech had seen that kind of launch since the crazy old days of the Dot.com bubble.

Over the last two months, she had formed her two management teams—one for eTernity under Armstrong, one for the road show; she had checked every fact and parsed every sentence of the company's prospectus, and helped put together the road show presentation materials. She had been so relentlessly focused that she'd scarcely had time to think about the ultimate goal itself.

And some of that had been intentional. ETernity would become a publicly traded company—with new reporting requirements, thousands of new shareholders, and the incredible wealth that was about to be dropped on her and her team. The implications were so great that Alison—as had always been her way—had put her head down and spent all her time making sure all the steps between now and then were done to the best of her ability.

But now it was real. The reaction at Sydney, and the growing excitement at each of the stops leading up to it, had proved that. More than, it was starting to look
better
than real: eTernity was not only going to go public in the new few days or weeks—depending on when the underwriter thought the market was ripe—but it also might go out in one of those supernova tech IPOs—like Apple, Netscape, Google—which had came to define its era. The company was going to be the latest phenom, the standard by which the next few years of tech company offerings would be defined. The media attention would be ten times what it was now… and so would the scrutiny.

And not least—oh God, not least—was the fact that everybody on this plane, and nearly every one of the people back at the office in San Francisco, was about to become immensely, insanely rich. She had tried not to do the calculations for her own potential wealth, but she couldn't help herself. Frightened, she had stopped counting at $175 million.
On paper
, she reminded herself. Between the employee lock-out period and the time it would take for all of the shares to vest, it would be twenty-four months before she'd be able to sell her thousands of shares of stock… if she wanted to. And why should she? Despite the impending arrival of legions of new owners, eTernity was still
her
company. From here on, every share she sold would be that much reduction in her power and influence over the company. Selling would be like cutting away her own flesh.

Alison glanced over at Jenny, who was still lost in her reading. What loyalty does
she
have in the company? she wondered. This company is my dream; what is her secret dream that sudden riches will finally make possible? How long will she stay when she doesn't have to stay any more? And what about everyone else? Everything changes now.
Everything.

She looked out the window again, into the endless darkness. As she did, she spotted a solitary light below on the ocean. An island? A freighter? A cruise ship? Whatever it is, she thought, it's a sign of life.

Forty-five dollars per share. It took her breath away. She remembered those early meetings in Arthur's office when they were meeting with representatives from the underwriter—Dan Crowen's old bank, ironically—and how they had predicted $22 per share at the high end. These days they admitted to being conservative at twice that amount. Forty-five dollars. It was unbelievable. At that price, eTernity—a company with $120 million in sales—would have a market cap of $2 billion. It was a value the company had planned to reach in six more years or more.

It would be nice, Alison told herself, if this stratospheric valuation was the market's vote of confidence in eTernity's products and management. But she knew it was just as much a reaction to the sudden shift in Validator Software's fortunes—and to the fact that the once invulnerable giant had made an unforced error and opened the door to this plucky young start-up.

Why did they do it?
she asked herself for the hundredth time. She was certain, despite any real evidence, that it hadn't been Dan Crowen's choice, no matter what the media said. No, this was Validator's decision. But why? Why cripple the company he had built from nothing with his bare hands? Had he grown old and senile and nihilistic? Was he determined to take down his own creation and destroy his legacy?
No
, she thought,
it can't be that.
Too many people over the years had made the mistake of betting on Validator being crazy.

He must have had a purpose for making this move, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out what it was—or how, now that the Validator sales force was gone, the company could recover in time. In less than five years, eTernity could catch it, maybe even pass it.

So maybe the answer was the simple one: Validator Software had just made a dumb business decision. Alison shook her head. What an unbelievable piece of good luck.
Wherever you are, Cosmo Validator, I thank you with all my heart.

Enough thinking,
she told herself, driving away the reverie.
The die is already cast. All you can do is make sure you play your part the best you can.
She pulled open her laptop—the blue flash of the screen almost startled her—and began to read her messages. One of the smartest things her team had done was to insist on the extra lease price of a jet with broadband Internet access. Needless to say, it had led to a fair amount of funny YouTube videos and creepy Japanese porn in the back of the plane, but it had also made them all much more productive. Even more important, it made them feel linked to the company back home.

Alison answered a few emails and messages. Nothing really important, other than a nice “go get ‘em!” note from Arthur Bellflower and some Google Alerts filled with coverage about the eTernity IPO. Most were the same: speculation but no facts.
Good, good
. No one at the company had shot their mouth off and violated the SEC Quiet Period—thanks in no small part to a speech she'd given a month before. Employees still talked about it; few had ever heard so much menace and implied threat in her voice.

There were some Tweets calling for Alison's attention, but she stayed away from Twitter. Eight hours earlier, still giddy from the Sydney presentation, she had Tweeted twice about how well the event had gone. Literally within seconds, she had received an instant message from the underwriter's attorney telling her, in so many words, to shut up before the Feds read these things and suspended the IPO. Red-faced, Alison did exactly as she was told. Her worst nightmare now was that
she
would be the idiot who wrecked the deal. She swore to herself that she wouldn't send a Tweet, post a blog entry, or discuss the IPO with anyone outside of the players themselves until after Going Public day.

Instead, she pulled up Dale's Facebook page. She hadn't heard from him in a week, beyond a curt “Busy. Writing.” two days ago. Alison had long since grown accustomed to the paradox that serious writers were poor correspondents. Dale always claimed that it was because “real” writers fretted endlessly over every word, while “civilians” could dash off a note without thinking twice. Since Dale was the only writer she'd ever known intimately, she had no reason to doubt him.

She stared at his best photo. He had sharp, unshaven cheekbones and almond-shaped blue eyes that peeked out from behind long brown hair.
Look at how gorgeous he is
, she thought. She remembered the day the photo had been taken. She had rented them a house at Sea Ranch for the week. They'd spent that day walking on the beach, and had eaten chowder and crab for dinner. Afterwards, in bed, she'd listened to Dale read a chapter from his unfinished novel, then the two of them had spent a long night of blissful lovemaking.

She scrolled down to look at the other familiar and comforting photos. Instead, she saw a new image, loaded within the last two days. It showed Dale sitting in their favorite bar, drunk and grinning, with his arms around two slutty-looking girls with too much make-up and too little clothing. Alison stared at the image for a long time. Then, realizing that Jenny was looking over her shoulder, she cleared the screen.

I wonder what time it is the States?
She called up the time zone conversion widget on the laptop. It was 11:00 a.m. in San Francisco. She opened Skype and fished the head-set out of her briefcase.
He'll be up by now,
she told herself,
and if he isn't, well, he should be up.
She glanced over at Jenny, who had returned to her book, and tapped in the phone number.

It rang six times before Dale answered with a curt, “Yeah?”

“Hi, honey, it's me.”

“I figured.”

“Know where I am?”

“I'm guessing in a plane somewhere.”

“Well, yeah. Over the Pacific—well, the Philippine Sea to be precise—about an hour out of Tokyo Narita.”

Dale didn't say anything, as if he was waiting for her to say something more. Finally, he asked, “What's up? Why the call?”

“Oh, I just missed you. I wanted to see what you were up to.”

“Checking up on me?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I've just been stuck on this plane or in some hotel conference room somewhere for the last week, and I wanted to imagine being home with you.”

“Well, what do you think I'm doing? I'm writing. That's what I do, as I'm sure you've figured out by now.”

“Don't be that way. I didn't think that if I called this early I'd interrupt your writing.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “What else is going on?”

“Just speeches and long plane flights. Have you read any of the news coverage?”

“No. Good?”

“Oh yes. Very good. And wow, you must be working hard.”

“Yeah, I think I've had a real breakthrough on one of the plot turns.”

“Oh, that's great. I'm so happy for you.”

His voice seemed to brighten at her reaction. “Yeah, I've been working day and night.”

“Well,” said Alison, “not every night.”

“Huh?”

“I saw your new Facebook photo.”

Dale's voice grew dark and suspicious. “That? Nothing. I went out two nights ago with Davey—you know, the bassist?—and he showed up with a couple girls… you know, dykes. He took the photo as a joke.”

Alison called up the image on her computer screen. “Those are pretty cute lesbians.”

“More and more are like that these days. Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem.”

“Do you think I would have posted that photo if there was something going on?”

“Of course not,” said Alison.

“Good.” Dale's voice was triumphant. “So, when are you getting home?”

“I'm back in the States in a couple days, but have to spend two more days after that in Seattle and L.A. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, well, there's a bit of a problem. I'm almost out of money.”

“I left you over a thousand dollars, Dale.”

“Yeah, but you know. I took some folks out to lunch. Dinner. It's been lonely here without you.”

“That's very sweet.”

“So, I was wondering if you could tell me where that extra ATM card of yours is, and the code number. I just need to take out maybe two hundred dollars to tide me over until you get home.”

Now it was her turn to be silent. Finally, she said, “No, honey, that ATM card doesn't work anymore. That's why I put it away. But look: if you open my middle dresser drawer and look under the box that holds my pearls, you'll find six hundred dollars. Why don't you take half to make sure you're covered?”

“Are you sure it's there?” Dale sounded excited. She could hear him walking through the house.

“It's there. I put the money in the drawer just before I left.”