have any hope of solving them, it needed structure. It couldn’t be run in the informal, fortuitous way that most things at Fishbowl were run. In that respect, Kevin had been the worst person Andrei could have chosen to head the project. He had a taste for anarchy that was normally compensated by a group of senior programmers who knew his foibles and ensured that projects were completed despite him. But these lieutenants were lacking at Manhattan Avenue.
Fortunately, despite what had happened under Kevin, Andrei still had an opportunity to recover the situation. He had the respect of the Manhattanites. They knew better than anyone that the project had been going nowhere under Kevin, and removing him showed decisiveness. Although each of them was far more knowledgeable than Andrei in his or her field, they were impressed by the way he had spent time sitting and listening, by the questions he had asked, and by the engagement with their answers that he had shown. They also recognized that he had envisioned and built what was clearly by now one of the world’s great websites, and had also envisioned this project of which they were lucky enough to be a part. And every one of them, no matter how gifted or arrogant, did feel lucky to be a part of it, and not only because of the money they were earning and the stock that was accumulating in their options accounts. To be part of a group like this was a once-in-a-generation experience, given to very few. The departments they had come from could only dream of pulling together this concentration of talent and expertise. All of them had often imagined what they could achieve, what apparently insurmountable obstacles could be overleapt, if only the whole range of talents could be brought into the room. And here, on Manhattan Avenue in East Palo Alto, thanks to Andrei, they had been.
The first thing Andrei did on taking over was to organize a second seminar. He had everyone outline what they thought needed to be done to develop the Manhattan programme and what role they saw for themselves. There was vigorous, often passionate debate out of which emerged key themes, if not consensus. Then he worked with groups of people from within and across each of the disciplines in a series of wheelspin-type sessions to rank the issues and shape them into a work programme.
There was unhappiness about some people being chosen to work directly with Andrei and others not, but a hierarchy of sorts was emerging. Project leaders were named and teams were formed to work on each of the issues. They reported back to each other in an all-day Friday session each week.
Andrei found his new role both incredibly stimulating and extraordinarily challenging. He was constantly talking to people, identifying problems, trying to find ways to solve them. In that respect, he was like a kid with a toy box. But he was also constantly at the very edge of the envelope of his knowledge – or even outside it – with people whose minds were razor sharp. And, in many instances, those minds came with egos to match. He loved it and at the same time it scared him. He had never felt more alive.
Slowly, progress began to be made. Problems were solved. Solutions converged and new issues emerged. The progress got faster. In what seemed to Andrei like the blink of an eye, a year had passed. Already, $100 million dollars had been spent.
The rest of Fishbowl was running largely without Andrei. His tendency to bury himself in the fun stuff, which had started back in the days of James Langan, took over. At one point he hadn’t appeared at Embarcadero for over a month and Jenn McGrealy found herself having to physically go over to Manhattan to get things done. She insisted that he agree to spend at least one day in the Embarcadero office every week, and she set out to look for premises that would unite all the Fishbowl offices with space for the growth that was still taking place.
Andrei agreed for her to find somewhere new and to bring the Fish Farm onto the same campus, but he refused to move the Manhattan Project. Here groundbreaking work was being done, work that would have application, he knew, way outside Fishbowl. For Andrei, this had nothing to do with business. Here, a revolution was taking place, and it was going to stay in splendid isolation until