1 May, 1 June. Alongside each date he listed a user number, rising to hit 10 million by the last date. ‘If we can track that growth curve, this comes first.’
Ben smiled. ‘If you don’t hit those numbers, you’ll do more, not less.’
Andrei pushed the napkin across the table. ‘I want to know if you guys are prepared to be in.’
‘Dude, we told you we’re in,’ said Kevin. ‘What part of “in” don’t you understand?’
‘Then going back to what you said before, I want you to have part of the company.’
‘What company?’ said Ben.
‘The company I went to the lawyer to set up. This is getting big. I agree with you, Kevin – I couldn’t have got this far without you, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that. It’s going to get more crazy, not less. We haven’t even seen the start of it.’
‘So you’re saying … you want to give us a share?’
Andrei nodded. He had no idea how he was going to manage his school work for the rest of the year, but he had no intention of selling Fishbowll, even if he could get some money for it. That wasn’t why he had built the site. He had seriously asked himself if he was the best person to build the site and he had come up with the answer that he didn’t think anyone else would understand his vision of connection the way he did. And that meant that if he wanted that vision to come to life, in all of its power and its purity, he had to keep building it. If he sold it, it would never be the Fishbowll it could be, and his vision would never be realized. Whoever bought it would prostitute it to advertising, like every other site on the net, to make as much money as they could.
But he couldn’t do it by himself. That was something else he had decided very clearly. He had started something, and he had no idea where it was taking him. Already, after two months, Fishbowll was bigger, more diverse, more demanding – different, in almost every way – than anything he could have imagined when he began. It way too lonely to be doing this alone. He had felt that in the plane home, out of San Francisco, and he had felt it even more strongly coming back. He needed help. He needed brothers in arms, and those brothers were Ben and Kevin. He needed the way Ben listened, the way he thought. It was Ben who had come up with the idea for the Grotto, Ben who had said the things on the way to Ricker that had finally set off the explosion in his head that had made Fishbowll work. And he needed Kevin, who was as much of a wheelspinner as he was. He wanted them to be in, in a way that was strong and permanent. And if there was ever going to be any money in Fishbowll, he wanted them to have part of it too.
He had no problem with Kevin having asked before he had had the chance to make the offer. After the work he had put in, Kevin had every right.
‘Ben,’ he said, ‘we wouldn’t be here without the things you said to me. Kevin, you’re a Stakhanovite.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the old Soviet term for a hero worker, the guys who did more than anyone thought possible. We would have crashed and burned in week two without you. I want you to have fifteen per cent of the company each. But I’m going to need you to put in some money. We need more server space. I’m putting in everything I’ve got, every last cent I’ve saved. Can you find something? I don’t know, talk to your families. Say, fifty thousand each.’
‘How long will that take us through to?’ asked Kevin.
Andrei glanced at the napkin with the numbers he had written. ‘September? I figure we’re also going to have to pay someone to help with the coding, and that should cover that as well.’
Kevin considered it. Obviously, Andrei wasn’t going to divide the company equally, with each of them getting 33 per cent. Andrei had had the idea, he had made it happen, he had put in the initial funds for server space. He deserved to have more. Kevin hadn’t settled on a share for himself that he thought would be fair. Twenty would have been nice. Ten would have been low.
Fifteen per cent of