The Startup Wife(66)
I’m not sure what he means, exactly. “Crazy Craig said to buy a company, not merge with a company.”
Cyrus puts his little knife down gently. “No decisions have been made.”
“You say that, but I recognize the tone in your voice, the one where you’ve already made up your mind and come up with a million arguments for doing something your way, and by the time you’re done, the rest of us have no choice but to fall in line.”
“It’s a merger, Asha, not a war.”
“See, you said it. Merger, not acquisition.”
“Craig wants us to find new revenue streams, so that’s why we are buying Obit.ly. It was your idea. Integrating the tech into our platform is just the natural extension of that. There’s no grand conspiracy, darling.”
“Dammit, Cy, don’t call me darling.”
He puts down his paint, reaches over, and kisses me.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I mumble. “Glass wall and all that.”
He pulls me tighter against him, and the smell of turpentine rises from his body. “I hear you,” he says. “I really do.” He leans down and looks into my eyes. “You’re so beautiful. Is that a new eyeliner you’re wearing?”
It is, and I hate that he notices everything. I kiss him back, my lips softening. Maybe he’s right, maybe Marco’s idea will flourish, and maybe Marco himself will be neutralized by the force of Cyrus. God knows the rest of us have been.
* * *
Marco is presenting Obit.ly to our board. “I’ve bootstrapped the company myself. I’m the only shareholder, and I’ve built all the tech.”
Craig has dialed in. “No big dev team around you, huh?” he asks. His face is enormous on the screen, and I feel like the question is directed at me, because Ren and I have fifty-two devs on our team, and Craig has been asking annoying questions about our cost base.
Marco keeps smoothing the hair on the sides of his head like he’s in a high school production of Grease. “Just me. I’m one hundred percent committed to my mission.”
“What is your mission, just so we’re clear?” I ask.
“I want to bring the benefits of the digital age—transparency, efficiency, ease of use—to our online deaths.” When he puts it that way, it doesn’t sound so crazy.
“You’re ready to launch in twelve weeks, right, Marco?” Cyrus prompts.
“That’s right, Captain.” Captain is Marco’s new nickname for Cyrus. This does not irritate me at all.
“There are some amazing synergies between the two companies,” Cyrus says. “Death rites are our most requested rituals, making up twenty-three percent of all queries on the platform.”
“What’s Obit.ly actually going to do?” Rupert asks.
“You give us permission to access all your social media accounts in the event of your death,” Marco says. “We close things down, write to all your friends, inform everyone about your final wishes. It’s like a will, except for your online presence.”
“What’s the market size?”
“Well, so far there’s no competition—no one else is trying to do this. But dead people are going to outnumber living people on social media within ten years. You obviously don’t want to give anyone access to your accounts while you’re still alive, but once you’re dead, there needs to be a way to put an end to your online presence.”
“I don’t know,” Rupert says. “You’re dealing with a lot of sensitive information.”
Craig loves it. “This is awesome,” he says. “I get so freaked out when a dead person suddenly appears in my feed.”
“Have you done a risk assessment?” Rupert asks. “What’s the tech behind the security?”
“Asha’s in charge of that,” Cyrus says. He turns to me.
“Ren and I will run all the stress tests,” I say. Then I turn to Marco, “Tell us what inspired you to start Obit.ly,” hoping that he’ll tell some kind of creepy story about keeping his mother’s corpse locked in the attic.
Marco looks down at his shoes and then up at the ceiling. “My mother passed away when I was very young. And my family—my father and my grandparents—thought it would be better not to tell me the truth until I was older. I can understand where they were coming from—it wasn’t a pleasant story—she took her own life. But I’ve always been haunted by those years of secrecy.” He clears his throat. I can’t help feeling a surge of sympathy for Marco; it’s impossible not to be moved by a grown man standing up in front of a roomful of strangers to talk about his mother’s death.
Craig is shaking his head. “This is mind-blowing.”
“And there’s more,” Marco says. “I think the world is going to have a different relationship to death in the next ten, twenty years.”
I perk up. Here comes the crazy.
“Climate change is going to create events that wipe out large portions of the human population. Pandemics, natural disasters. Our sense of safety is going to collapse around us. Obit.ly is about confronting that inevitability, about using tech to help us prepare for what’s to come.”
I look around the room to see where this last statement has landed. Rupert looks a little worried, but no more than usual. Craig is practically drooling with excitement.