The Startup Wife(23)
I ask what he means.
“My app, Obit.ly—it’s going to make the whole process of dying more intentional. You’re going to get to curate your own death on social media.”
“Do we really need to curate death?” Destiny asks.
“Do we really need to police our sex lives?” Marco counters.
“I know a lot of women would enjoy sex a hell of a lot more if they felt safe.” Destiny chugs the last of her latte and leaves a line of pale yellow foam on her upper lip.
“None of this will matter when mass agriculture collapses,” Rory says, trying to broker a truce. “We all have good intentions, but our efforts are futile.”
“I know, let’s get the priest in here, he can tell us what’s kosher.”
I’ve had it with Marco’s smug Grim Reaper act. “Cyrus is not a priest. And anyway, why does a man have to adjudicate? We’ve stated our position, which is that consensual sex is what we need and deserve. If you’re not into that, you can piss off.”
Destiny leans over and squeezes my hand. Her fingers are cold, so I give the back of her hand a good rub and then I say, “He may be the priest, but Jules and I are the gods. Come on, Jules, let’s get back to work.”
* * *
While Cyrus is out getting to know every faith-based system in the greater New York area, Jules and I spend all our daylight hours at Utopia. When we leave, only Rory’s lab is illuminated, and we can see him moving around in there, alone in a white coat, tending to his souped-up plants. By the time summer is over and autumn is starting to bite, I have finished coding v2 of the WAI platform.
“We have to raise money,” Jules says. I knew this was coming—we can’t live on his allowance forever, and we don’t have the money to launch—but neither of us knows how to do this, not even Jules, whose amniotic fluid was probably flecked with gold. I’ve gone as far as leafing through copies of Harvard Business Review, and subscribing to daily updates from various websites that promise to tell me how to do it, but all I can see is funding for self-driving cars, for putting stuff up in the cloud like it’s one giant safe-deposit box in the sky, and subscriptions to everything from dye-free tampons to vegan protein powder. There’s fintech, biotech, oiltech, real estate, bento boxes of skin care, and tiffin carriers of meat-free protein. There are no funds for quasi-religious platforms. We are not solving a problem, at least not one that anyone has identified as important or, crucially, an opportunity to get rich.
I ask Li Ann. She’s launched apps before, and she knows how to raise money—after all, she’s the one who got all those bigwigs to fund Utopia’s endowment in the first place. Aside from running the selection committee, she spends her time on little side projects—“The afterworld is going to need a few frills,” she tells us. Right now she’s working on something she calls Spoken, a filter that scans emails to make sure the language isn’t accidentally triggering or offensive. “Everyone can sound woke,” she says. “No matter how old they are.”
Li Ann’s office faces west, with a full bank of windows overlooking the water. She sits behind a glass-topped desk looking like Nefertiti while two young men in identical polo shirts code furiously beside her.
When I knock on her door, she looks up and waves. “Please, come in, Asha. How’s the platform?”
“Slow, but we’re making progress.”
“I hear you’ve been pulling some late nights.”
“There’s a lot to do,” I begin. “We’re a little overwhelmed by the whole fundraising thing.”
“It’s a dark art,” she says, nodding.
“I think at some point we’re going to need to hire a few people.”
She claps. “Hiring! That’s exciting. I love the process of finding the right fit.” She looks over to her two manservants and beams.
“We just can’t afford it right now.”
“You know, there’s really no price tag on the right talent. It’s always worth it to get the very best.” Her phone pings. She picks it up, glances at it, puts it back down. “I know a good exec recruiter, you’d love her.”
“That’s great, thanks, Li Ann.”
“What does Cyrus say?”
“About the fundraising or the hiring?”
“Either.” She shrugs.
“Not very much, to be honest.” I laugh. “I’m still not sure he’s into it.”
I see her straighten. “Have you incorporated?” she asks, giving me a sideways glance.
“Excuse me?”
“Have you registered? Started an IP portfolio? Decided who owns what?”
“There’s nothing to own,” I say. “It’s just numbers, zeros and ones.”
“You’re joking, right?” Little points of red flash behind her dark brown eyes.
“We’re married,” I say, digesting my own lameness in real time. “But you’re right, of course. We should have a legal entity.”
She scrolls through her phone, and a few seconds later, I feel mine buzz. “I’ve sent you the name of a good lawyer. He won’t charge you—he’ll just take a few points to start with. I suggest you stop coding and get your house in order.” And then she waves me away with a flick of her hand, and she does it with such elegance that I don’t even mind.