School pages that have been set up against this thing,’ said Louise.
‘That’s not defection,’ said Chris. ‘That’s loyalty.’
‘I think we’re taking a huge risk. Can we do this kind of thing? Is it legit?’
‘We’re a private company,’ said Chris. ‘Everyone who holds a voting share is sitting in this room. We can do anything that’s within the law.’
‘And this is?’ said Louise. ‘Do we know that?’
‘We’ve had advice.’
‘Like I said, if you’re not comfortable, Louise, you can leave,’ said Andrei. ‘You too, Alan. This is a challenge to my thinking, but that’s what I want Fishbowl to be. A place where our thinking is challenged. Every single person in this company needs to be totally cool with that. If it’s too uncomfortable for you, I understand. No hard feelings. You’ll keep your stock options. You’ll have to abide by your non-disclosure clause, that’s all.’
There was silence for a moment, then Alan shrugged. ‘I don’t know, this is kind of interesting. What do we do next?’
‘You can see why I can’t issue the kind of statement you want,’ said Andrei.
‘Then I guess you’ll have to admit it. You can’t keep evading it.’
‘Everyone in the company is confused,’ said Louise. ‘They’re talking. Fifty people must have seen the way James left yesterday and …’ She nodded towards Chris and his bruised face. ‘They need to know what’s going on.’
Andrei looked out of the glass walls of the meeting room and saw dozens of pairs of eyes quickly averted.
‘We’ve got to get a meeting room where not everyone can fucking see everything we say,’ muttered Chris. ‘Any of those guys lip read out there?’
‘Probably,’ said Kevin.
‘I’m serious, Andrei,’ said Louise. ‘You’ve got to talk to them.’
That afternoon, Andrei gave an all-hands talk in the office, standing next to the aquarium in front of the 400 and some Fishbowl employees who now inhabited the office on Embarcadero, with a videolink to the Fishbowl offices that had recently been set up in New York and London.
It wasn’t a situation in which Andrei instinctively felt comfortable. His natural connection was with the tech guys but he knew that in front of him more than two-thirds of the people were commercial. His anxiety level was also raised by the fact that he was not going to be telling the truth – or at least not the whole truth. Six or seven people might just about be able to keep things confidential, but hundreds wouldn’t. Someone would talk, whether inadvertently or otherwise. And the stakes were even higher because the response of Fishbowl’s people was just as much a part of the experiment as the response of Fishbowl’s users. For the moment it looked as if Alan and Louise were staying, but they only knew about one of Chris’s experiments. There were still two more to be announced. If highly talented, creative people – the kind of people Fishbowl had increasingly been able to attract – didn’t want to work for a company that provided that form of Deep Connectedness, then it wasn’t viable, whether users wanted it or not. Fishbowl’s employees had just as much opportunity to put an end to this as did its users.
First, Andrei addressed the topic of James Langan’s departure. He attributed it to differences that had been developing between them for some time, particularly over the speed of Fishbowl’s possible IPO. He admitted that James was also concerned by the rumour of a new kind of marketing but had chosen not to stick around to investigate it. Technically, that was true. Second, Andrei addressed the rumour itself. He said that, as he had said in his Grotto posting, it needed to be fully investigated, but that whatever came out of the investigation, every necessary action would be taken to protect Fishbowl’s reputation and position it even more strongly for success, and if anyone had any thoughts on that, he wanted to hear from them personally, either then or any time in the future. Then he took questions.
The first one, naturally, was what he would do if the rumour about the selling of watches proved to be true.
Andrei had rehearsed his answer to this question with Alan, but still he hesitated. Anything he said now would be remembered by the entire company. He had to lay the groundwork for events that were going to follow, not put himself in a position of having to change direction later, and certainly not say anything that could eventually be interpreted as a lie.
‘That would depend,’ he