The Startup Wife(28)

“I had to get on my bike this morning and stand outside Starbucks till it opened. Starbucks in a strip mall. That’s what turns you on in Merrick.”



* * *



We have no leads either, despite Jules exhausting his admittedly not very long list of contacts from his Sellyourshit.com days. I have taken to borrowing money from my parents, which makes me feel like I’m permanently wearing an itchy sweater. And we haven’t been able to hire anyone, not even the person who is going to design the platform.

Then Jules walks into Utopia one day with the chinless investor. He brings him over to our desks, and I frantically try to hide the evidence of my four p.m. french fry habit. “Frank wanted to meet again,” Jules announces.

It takes me a second or two to wipe the grease from my fingertips. “Nice to see you,” I say, wondering if he can sense that I’ve been sticking virtual pins in him.

“I have to say, folks, I’m intrigued.”

“Intrigued is good,” Jules says. “We can intrigue you more.”

Frank pulls up a chair. “How do you see this thing working?”

Jules gestures toward me. “Asha’s the expert.”

I talk him through the basics of the algorithm. He asks a few not totally idiotic questions. “This is pretty impressive,” he says. “Do you have a business plan? And who’s on the leadership team?”

I tell him it’s just us.

“We’re going to build it out, of course,” Jules says. “We think a team of about twenty pre-launch, and then depending on engagement, we can grow proportionally.”

I nod as if we’ve had many meetings about team size.

“Have you thought about roles?”

“We’re all co-founders,” Jules says.

“One of you has to be CEO.”

“We assumed it would be Asha,” Jules tells him, although, again, we have never talked about it.

“Or Jules.” I shrug.

“All the technical aspects of the platform have been developed by Asha,” Jules says. He shoots me this look that I think means Stop making it sound like we don’t have our shit together.

Frank leans back in his seat and regards us, doing whatever mental calculation people like him do at times like these. Even before he starts talking, I know what he’s going to say. It comes together in my mind the way things do when they’re inevitable—like they’ve been there all along.

“Look,” Frank says, “it’s not up to me. But if I were you, I would make your guy—what’s his name?”

“Cyrus.”

“Yeah, Cyrus, the CEO. Because someone has to represent the idea—it’s woo-woo enough as it is, and if you’re going to pull in seed money, the person at the heart of this whole thing should represent you.”

“What do you mean by woo-woo?” I ask, even though I can’t say I disagree.

“He means it’s going to be difficult to raise money,” Jules says. “But we already knew that.”

“I thought that’s why you were here.”

“Frank is just here to give advice,” Jules says.

“Not necessarily,” Frank says. “I’ve been doing little investments here and there. You know Countify?”

“No.”

“It’s a SaaS company, they do cloud-based storage for cloud-based services. IPO’ed last year, and I got in early, so I’ve got some funds for seed stage investments.”

I have no idea what SaaS means. I’m assuming it is not, in fact, sass. “Is Cyrus being the CEO a deal breaker for you?” I ask.

“I’m just telling you what I would do if I were you.”

Why do people say “if I were you” when there is no way they could ever be you? We thank Frank and he trots away, and Jules and I are left wondering what to do about Cyrus.



* * *



On the last Friday of every month, Li Ann holds auditions for the new crop of Utopians. In early December, eight months after we’ve moved in, it’s my turn to sit on the selection committee.

Li Ann hands around the list of hopefuls. Saint or Sinner is the name of the first company. It produces wearables that turn red or green depending on your climate behavior that day. Did you take a taxi? Ride the bus? Buy a plastic bottle of water? Was it Fiji? The ring or bracelet or necklace tracks everything. At the end of the day, when you’re sitting in front of your dinner, you get a personal audit of all your shitty behavior that day. And then you wake up and try again.

The two men making the pitch hand around a few bits of jewelry. Li Ann and I each get to try on a ring. Marco gets a cuff link.

“In ten years, wearables will be the only accessories around,” one of them says.

“Why wear something that’s purely ornamental when it can work for you?” the other one echoes.

“How do I know if I’m a saint or a sinner?” I ask.

“It’s going to change color.”

“But how will it know what I’m doing? Is it going to take photos?”

“We’re still prototyping that,” the first one explains. “We’ll probably use sensors and bar codes.”

“Or cameras,” the other one says. They tell us more about the cameras, then give us a slightly glitchy demo.