year if necessary. But he didn’t need to. Koss rang him.
Mentally clearing his diary of anything that was in it, Standish said he could be in Palo Alto the next day. He asked Andrei where he wanted to meet.
Andrei gave him the name of the first place that came into his head.
Standish stood on University Avenue with the 4Site colleague he had brought with him. They were both dressed in open-neck shirts and chinos. Standish was a little overweight with receding reddish hair. The other man, Andy Merritt, was dark-haired, good looking and young. Ed Standish knew that he himself looked an unlikely type to specialize in dealing with tech startups, and liked to have someone who fitted the stereotypical mould at a first meeting to set the tech guys at ease.
‘You sure this is the place?’ said Merritt doubtfully.
Standish looked at the name on the door. Yao’s. ‘This is it.’
In they went. They found Andrei, Kevin and Ben sitting at a table with the remnants of a meal in front of them. Standish wondered if this was some kind of weird power play on Andrei’s part, to have him turn up like a supplicant while they were eating.
The truth was, while they were meant to meet at one o’clock, Andrei had got hungry and had headed down for lunch at twelve.
Standish introduced himself and Merritt and then sat down.
‘Do you want to order?’ said Ben, looking around for Lopez.
Standish shook his head. ‘We’re fine. Andy, you OK?’
‘Sure,’ said Merritt.
‘Let’s talk,’ said Standish. He started by congratulating Andrei on Fishbowll and said that 4Site had a team that tracked developing companies in the internet space and Fishbowll was the most exciting thing they had seen in years. ‘Everyone at 4Site is dying to work with you guys.’
‘What control will we have?’ said Andrei by way of reply, jumping straight to one of the two main things on his mind.
Standish looked at him blankly for a moment.
‘Over the kind of advertising we do,’ said Andrei. ‘You said on the phone we’d have control.’
Standish smiled. ‘It’s something we’d work out together. Like I said on the phone, this has to be win-win for you and your users. The kind of advertising you put on the site has to enhance the experience. It’s something your users have to value. We know how important that is. We’ll have time to discuss that.’
‘What if any advertising we put on the site can only detract from the experience? What if they come to the site because they want a site where there is no advertising?’
‘Well, Mr Koss,’ said Standish, quickly abandoning his plan for how he wanted to direct the conversation and deciding to go along with the stream of questions coming at him, ‘if that’s the case, then you don’t want us. But I doubt that’s the case.’
‘You don’t know our users.’
‘What I do know is that not a single website that I’m aware of – and you can correct me if I’m wrong – has ever been abandoned by its users because of advertising. I don’t know of a single case where it’s had negative impact of any duration. A lot of hot air, but nothing real. Do you know of any examples, Andy?’
The younger advertising executive shook his head.
‘People are realistic now,’ said Standish. ‘They expect it. They know the internet doesn’t come for free.’
‘Andrei’s got very high principles,’ said Ben.
‘That’s good,’ said Standish. It wasn’t the first time he had had to deal with a start-up founder agonizing over introducing advertising to his site. Most of them got over their qualms pretty quickly. ‘Look, it may be, Andrei, that you’re thinking this is some kind of betrayal of why you started Fishbowll. And I understand that. But the bigger betrayal, I think, is if you’re not businesslike, if you let your principles – which I respect – get in the way of making sure that you can provide the best possible service for your users, or, even worse, your survival. You’ve got to raise money in order to do that. Let’s face it – that’s the reality. We’re here to help you do that in the way you’re comfortable doing it. We’re not here to try to make you put anything on the site that doesn’t work for you. In the long run, that’s not smart. Even if we earn a little more today, that means we all earn a whole lot less tomorrow. I don’t like to think of it as