Hot Boss - Anne Marsh Page 0,2
planning and investing in the long term marries a serendipitous, disruptive idea and revolutionizes the world. Instacart, DoorDash, eBay, Snapchat, Facebook—they shook up our world and made their mark. This start-up will do the same. I know it.
The feeling of winning is addictive, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Hazel (the Coleman half of Coleman and Reed) knows exactly how I feel. Together we run one of the most successful venture capital funds in the world. What’s VC? We’re the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus of the business world. If you’ve been very, very good and dotted all your i’s, crossed each t, we can make it rain cash and bring your dreams to life. It’s a common misconception that VC guys are vultures, looking to swoop in and take over. I don’t want to run your company or disassemble it. I want to take it public and sell it for a hundred—a thousand—times what it was valued at the day I walked in the door. Thank me and get out of my way.
We’ve been holed up in Hazel’s office all day, monitoring the IPO while the rest of our team makes a valiant effort to pretend that today is just your average, ordinary workday, when it’s all the holidays and a freaking pot of gold at the end of the Silicon Valley rainbow rolled into one. You see, Hazel and I did something different when we founded this particular VC fund. We insisted that everyone who worked here—from the guy who pushes a vacuum through our late-night sessions, to our Gal Friday receptionist, to the six analysts on our team—should have skin in the game. And to make that happen, we bumped their salaries up 20 percent and invested that extra in the fund.
As a result, Hazel and I have the richest janitor in Silicon Valley.
We also have the most loyal one.
Here in California, we’ve still got three hours of blazing hot sunshine until the close of the business day. Outside, BMWs and expensive luxury cars shoot up and down Sand Hill Road, a short stretch of asphalt that fronts the most expensive real estate in Silicon Valley. What used to be six sleepy miles cutting through western Silicon Valley is now the center of the VC universe. Hollywood has Rodeo Drive and corporate big shots have Wall Street, but my tribe rules California. The biggest players have offices here and my heart still kicks into higher gear when I spot the green exit sign Sand Hill Rd above the sun-seared brown hills. That sign is the ultimate X-marks-the-spot and here-be-treasure. Sand Hill Road is where dreams come true or go bust, the epicenter of billions of dollars and power plays.
The closing bell rings, echoed by an audible happy sigh from the outer offices, like a sirocco ripping through the desert or a giant, man-eating raptor sighting prey. The stock popped and closed four times above ask.
You know that now-famous Oprah episode where she announces “You get a car. And you get a car. And you—yes, everyone gets a free car!” That’s the prevailing mood in the offices of Coleman and Reed today. Our long-shot company just made its initial public offering and now we’re all rolling in cash. You know what’s even better than free money? Money that you earned because you were fucking right.
“Told you.” I grab the champagne flutes from the shelf above her desk.
“Show-off,” she grunts. Now that the market’s closed, she pops out of her seat. Frankly, I’m surprised she’s managed to sit still for so long. While our team celebrates, she grabs the edge of her desk, performing some kind of bendy, plié-squat thing. She claims it’s important to get up and move every hour—otherwise your chances of stroking out escalate faster than a poorly capitalized start-up plummets during its debut.
I prefer to get my exercise on the beach. Surfing works, as does running. Standing in place and bending my knees? Where’s the challenge?
“You know you can buy a new heart and a couple of kidneys with the twenty million dollars you just earned, right?”
Brown eyes narrow at me with laser focus. “Jealous, Reed?”
“Please. As if.” I blow her a raspberry because that’s what longtime friends do—they give each other shit.
“Mature.” And then she sticks her tongue out at me, finishing her reps before grabbing her coffee mug and slurping down an obscene amount of room-temperature tap water.
Hazel’s not a glass-half-full kind of person. She knows exactly how many