if it works on a commercial basis, then leak the fact that it’s been happening. There’ll be a shitstorm. We’ll say we don’t know how it happened, we’re shocked, we’re going to investigate, yada, yada, yada – then let’s assess where we are a couple of months after that. If there’s been a sustained impact on the user base, I’ll concede. I still think this is the future, but I’ll accept we shouldn’t be the first mover and we should wait for someone else to blaze the trail.’
‘Dude,’ said Kevin, ‘no way James is going to let you do that. You heard what he—’
‘James doesn’t make the decisions!’ snapped Chris. ‘Kevin, James is the COO. He executes what he’s fucking told to execute.’ Chris looked at Andrei. ‘James doesn’t get it. This is start-up mode, Andrei. This is trying something new and radical. Come on. You and I both know James doesn’t get that stuff. But this is what Fishbowl is for. To do the big stuff, the groundbreaking stuff. Look, we don’t need to use anyone from the commercial team. We don’t even need to tell Ed Standish. I’ll find someone to help me and I’ll do it from LA. I’ll keep you informed. You’ll have a veto over the decisions. And I won’t tell any lies. I didn’t tell any lies about Bali – you’d be amazed how little I had to say. Guys, this is legal! And we can do it totally the Fishbowl way. Don’t make the world worse – don’t tell any lies.’
Andrei watched him. To do this without James knowing went against everything the headhunter had told him when he had hired the COO. She had urged him to make sure James was included in all the important decisions, even the technical ones. There was no way to undermine a business operator more quickly in a tech company, she said, than to cut him out of those.
And Chris had been there when she had said it.
‘You’re not even making a decision,’ said Chris. ‘It’s just an experiment. Even if it works, you can still say you don’t want to do it.’
‘And if it goes wrong?’ said Ben.
‘Blame it on me. We’ll say it was a rogue act and the company is severing its ties with me. Andrei, come on.’
Andrei didn’t reply.
‘You know what?’ said Chris impulsively. ‘How much is my five per cent of this company worth? Fifty million? A hundred million? If I’m wrong, I’ll not only take the blame, I’ll sell every last share back to you for the million bucks I paid.’
29
CHRIS’S OFFER TO sell back his shares for a million dollars if his experiment went wrong didn’t sway Andrei. If anything, it made him wary. A good idea shouldn’t have to be accompanied by a bribe.
Ben found Andrei the next day and asked if they could talk. When they had closed the door of a meeting room behind them, he told Andrei that he felt strongly that they shouldn’t proceed with the kind of activity Chris was suggesting.
Andrei already knew Ben felt like that from what he had said during the meeting. But in Andrei’s opinion, Ben had never had a particularly broad conceptualization of Deep Connectedness. Andrei heard him out but said little in reply, and Ben came away from the conversation frustrated and depressed. He went back to his desk and sat down, not sure what to do next. In general, he had too little to do. He was still Chief Mind Officer, but since James had joined as COO his role had become as nebulous as his title. When he had still been studying at Stanford that hadn’t been a bad thing, but now that he was back at Fishbowl full time, it left him underemployed and embarrassed at the thought that people must be wondering what he did all day. He had mentioned it to Andrei a couple of times but nothing had happened to change the situation.
From Andrei’s perspective, it wasn’t that he necessarily disagreed with Ben about Chris’s proposition. In fact, he wasn’t naturally in sympathy with the proposal, either, but he was determined to look past his own prejudices and view it through the lens of a broad conceptualization, one that was willing to constantly examine, challenge and, if necessary, change his assumptions about what Deep Connectedness meant. This conceptualization had moved a long way since the days in Fishbowl’s first year when he had baulked at putting conventional advertising on the site,