connect with. Group pages and chatrooms are full of people who get attracted to something momentarily and aren’t committed. I want to provide an avenue to find your way to people who you would want to talk to, because they’re interested in the things that are really important to you, but who you would never normally find. And I want you to be able to do it right now, today, this instant, and not have to wait for chance connections through friends of friends of friends that probably won’t even ever happen. I think of it as Deep Connectedness – taking you wherever and to whoever you want to go to in the world.’
‘The other night I asked you if it’s important,’ said Chris. ‘I asked if it’s the most important thing you could be doing. And you’re telling me there’s this Deep Connectedness you’re trying to facilitate – which I totally get and which I think is totally cool – but my question is, how important is that?’
‘World changingly,’ said Andrei without hesitation.
Chris smiled. ‘That’s what everyone always says. I’ve seen guys setting up an internet site to sell socks and they think they’re going to change the world. I tell them, “Dude, it’s socks. I already wear socks.”’
‘But you don’t already have Deep Connectedness. This is new. It’s something that makes the world a new place. We still see the world as divided up by place. That’s a way of thinking that comes out of old communication, where you’re limited by physicality.’
‘Is it? The telephone’s been around for over a century.’
‘And that wasn’t enough to change it. Why? Because I may have a phone, and I may be able to connect with any number in the world – but I don’t know who to call. There’s no one helping me find out. The places we live, those are accidents. They’re not the real things that unite or divide us. The things that do that are ideas, values, aspirations. And they’re not limited by place. These clusters, these communities of ideas, exist between places, outside places, but they’re real communities, or they’re starting to be, and if we can create the connections, they’ll be even more real. They’ll be larger, fuller, deeper. They won’t be limited to the elites. The way the world groups itself is changing. Give it Deep Connectedness, and it’ll change even faster. That’s what Fishbowll does. That’s what Fishbowll is for.’
Chris was silent, watching him.
‘You don’t think this has the potential to be world-changingly important?’ Andrei frowned. ‘Maybe I’ve got this out of proportion. You know, for the last eight months it’s just been Fishbowll, Fishbowll, Fishbowll, morning, noon and night.’ He paused again. ‘Maybe I’ve lost perspective.’
‘No,’ said Chris. ‘I don’t think you have. It’s not socks. It’s so not socks. I was just testing you a little, Andrei. Probably for the first time in my life I’m looking at a start-up where the founder is telling me it’s going to change the world and I find myself thinking, he’s right. And that is not a small thing, dude.’ Chris smiled. ‘That is a fucking monster thing.’ He picked up his Coke glass. ‘To the fucking monster thing that is Fishbowll.’ He clinked Andrei’s glass and drank. ‘Two more questions. Thirty-two million users. What do you project by the end of the year?’
‘Seventy to eighty million.’
‘Growth projections are never right. They’re either too high or too low. Historically, over your eight months, where have you been? I’m guessing you’ve been too low.’
Andrei nodded. ‘Back at the start of the year I wrote my projections on a napkin. Right here – right at that table over there. Ben still has it. Every month he brings it out. He tells me it’s nice to have some evidence that even Andrei Koss can be wrong.’
Chris laughed.
‘But the year-end projection I’ve just given you takes that into account.’
‘No, it doesn’t. You think it does, but it doesn’t. Not as far as infrastructure planning is concerned. Plan for a hundred, minimum. If you’re prudent, a hundred and twenty million. Do you have the infrastructure to serve that?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Will you have it? Andrei – and I speak from personal experience that I can tell you about some day, if you don’t mind me weeping into my beer – the thing that will kill you quicker than a coyote chasing down a roadrunner is if your server speed slows and if your site starts to go down. If Fishbowll gets a