1
 
All Hands on Pitch Deck
 
Adam Dory felt the impending doom of his own suffocation as the walls closed in on each other and the air left the room. He could feel T.J. and Amelia on either side, oblivious to what was happening to them. The two just sat there, trapping him as if they enjoyed watching his potential slowly peter out.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this: I don’t believe in your team.”
Adam concentrated his eyes on the venture capitalist, Ross Brown, who sat at the table before which the three Doreye cofounders stood, delivering this news.
He wished T.J. and Amelia would go away. Especially Amelia. People didn’t treat her like a prima donna because she wasn’t girly, but she had lately become the worst kind of high maintenance. Worse than any of the sorority girls Adam knew. She took every opportunity to blabber on about Internet freedom, and insisted they not charge users for any of Doreye’s services. She acted like her programming was the only thing in this company that mattered, despite seeing how hard Adam—whose job it was to make money—worked.
“Your product is one of the best I’ve ever seen. The design is flawless, the user experience unmatched. And your business model is really provocative,” Ross Brown went on, referring to the PowerPoint presentation Adam had just delivered, a fifty-page deck of slides articulating the business plan he’d slaved over for the past three weeks in preparation for this meeting. It was because of Adam’s hard work that they were now asking Pingree Kort Collins, one of the world’s most prestigious venture capital firms, for a ten-million-dollar investment. That they were sitting across from Ross Brown, the firm’s most prolific partner, was a testament to their success.
“Unfortunately, plans and products aren’t the only pieces of a company: The team is critical, and I’m concerned about you three.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?” T.J. piped up, his voice shaking in an effort to control his frustration. Adam clenched his jaw. He knew T.J. was going to try to blame this on him, and it made him furious. If the team wasn’t doing well, it was because T.J. was too busy working out and schmoozing with investors to do any actual work. What did he care? Unlike Adam, who had no money and two-and-a-half more years of college to get through, T.J. had graduated and was already rich. For him, Doreye was just another toy, like his BMW, to show off to girls.
Ross Brown lifted his eyebrows and tilted his head, studying T.J. as if to discern whether he really wanted to know. The two junior partners at the table smiled surreptitiously at their boss, like hyenas eager to witness a mauling.
He undid the buttons at his wrists and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, showing off his tanned and muscular forearms.
“For starters, none of you has any experience.” T.J. started to protest, but Ross cut him off. “And no, T.J., watching your father invest in start-ups does not count. In addition, you’ve got competing male egos in T.J. and Adam and competing sibling egos in Adam and Amelia.” Ross paused. “Which might lead you to believe Adam is the problem, were it not for the fact that eliminating Adam would leave just T.J. and Amelia, who would never get any actual work done since T.J.’s too distracted by girls and Amelia would rather write code than make money.”
The hyenas smiled, their eyes darting across the three victims before them.
Adam looked at T.J., whose face was red, either from blushing or with rage. “So what do you suggest we do?” T.J. asked firmly.
Ross Brown shrugged and sat back in his chair. “For starters, define your roles.”
“What do you mean?”
“None of you has a title. If you want to make this work, you need to be very clear. Who is responsible for what? Amelia should obviously be chief technology officer, responsible purely for the product and its development. Take her out of the business side of things entirely. She gets no say in how you make money.”
Adam watched his sister drop her head as she toyed with the zipper on her hoodie. Finally, Ross was saying something that made sense.
“T.J. should be CEO, obviously, given his connections, his age and experience, and his ability to talk confidently when presenting.”
Adam’s jaw fell open. T.J.? CEO? Adam should be CEO. He’d just delivered a twenty-minute speech about Doreye; was he not “talking confidently when presenting”?
“What am I then?” he heard himself blurt.
Ross smiled, pleased with himself for predicting exactly how Adam would react. “You’re chief operating officer, in charge of execution.”
“Execution?”
“Yes. You’re the only one hungry enough to make this thing work. Amelia builds the product and T.J. is out talking about it. You make sure the company functions and that the right people are in the right positions.”
“I’m human resources? HR?” Adam choked. Was Ross Brown seriously suggesting that Adam’s value was hiring and firing people and making sure they remembered to submit their expenses on time?
“COO may not be the most glamorous role, but it’s critical. And human resources is the most critical of all. If you’d been listening to me three minutes ago you might have noticed that the whole reason I’m passing on this investment is because I don’t believe in your team.” Ross’s voice was irritated. “That’s your human resources,” he said sardonically, glaring at Adam for a moment before standing up from the table, the hyenas following his lead. Adam felt his face flush.
“On that note, I’ve got another meeting. Keep me informed of progress. If you’re able to address some of the issues we’ve talked about, I’d be happy to give Doreye another look. As I said, it’s one of the most promising products I’ve seen in quite some time, but you’ve got a lot of work to do.”
*   *   *
Ross and the hyenas let the door of the conference room fall shut behind them. The tension in the room was thick, and Amelia could feel her heart pounding, afraid to look up at T.J. or her brother. Things hadn’t been very organized since they’d gotten back from Maui—Amelia would sometimes go days without seeing either of them—but she was embarrassed to know outsiders like Ross were talking about it.
“I think he’s right,” T.J. said, finally breaking the silence.
“Of course you do,” Adam jumped in angrily. “You want to be in charge.”
“Someone needs to be,” T.J. snapped. “And clearly neither of you is capable of it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Amelia doesn’t even want us to make money, and you’re too afraid of her to insist we do.” T.J. was talking only to Adam, as if she weren’t even there. She looked up defensively.
“I—” she tried to interject softly.
“What?” T.J. turned to her, irritated. “You don’t.”
“I just think—” Amelia’s desire to keep Doreye free for users and open-source for developers had been a hot button, and she was struggling to articulate to T.J. and Adam why nothing on the Internet should be about making money.
“I know what you think,” T.J. said, cutting her off, “and it doesn’t make any sense. At least not if you want an actual company—which I think you do, don’t you?”
She nodded and looked at the floor. She missed the version of T.J. who used to defend her, like he did when that reporter in Maui cornered her about the juvenile detention center. What had happened to that T.J.?
“Wouldn’t you rather be off the hook for any of these conversations? Haven’t you always been saying you just want to go back to coding?” T.J. pressed. It was true.
“Yes.” Amelia didn’t look up. She thought, And I want the nice you back.
“Good. Then you’re CTO. That’s all you do now: no more on the business side.”
“I’m not being COO,” Adam said, bringing the attention back to him. “It’s demeaning.”
“It’s your only choice.”
“Since when do you get to decide?” Adam was fuming.
“I don’t,” T.J. said. His whole body was taut, focused on what he wanted. “The three of us make decisions by majority vote. So it’s up to Amelia.”
Her head jolted up at the sound of her name. T.J.’s blue eyes were piercing into her, as though he could see her whole heart exposed. He took a step forward and placed his hand on her shoulder, close to her neck, so that his hot fingers rested on the skin near her collar. “What do you think, Amelia?” he asked softly, kindly. That was it; that was the T.J. she missed.
“I think you should be CEO,” she said softly, looking into his eyes.
“Oh, this is such bullshit.” Adam threw up his arms.
His voice made Amelia snap out of her T.J. trance. “What, Adam? T.J. makes more sense as CEO, you know that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“He’s older and more … polished,” Amelia tried.
T.J. smiled at the support and let it make him generous. “And here’s the thing, Adam. If I don’t do a good job, you can fire me.”
“What?”
“As head of HR, you can fire me if I don’t do a good job.”
“Why don’t I just fire you right now, then?” Adam said, and snarled.
“Because you need me,” T.J. said with equal intensity. “And you know that.”
Amelia’s eyes darted between the two men, their eyes locked on each other. Ross was right: They were competing, but Amelia wasn’t sure over what. She didn’t know a lot about these things, but felt like if they could just work together they’d actually get a lot done.
“Fine,” Adam spat. “I don’t even care anymore.”
“I hope that’s not true; we need you,” T.J. said in his newly adopted CEO tone.
“Oh, screw you,” Adam said, rolling his eyes as he picked up his backpack and headed for the door. “I have to go to a meeting. I hope you’re happy,” he flung at Amelia before letting the door slam behind him.
Amelia let her eyelids flutter up to look at T.J., but he was packing his presentation materials into his messenger bag and not looking at her.
“I think that was the right thing to do,” she told him.
“I know it was,” he answered without looking up.
She let her incisor pinch the inside of her lip until it went numb.
“You’ve got to let me handle the business side of things now, okay, Amelia?” He finally looked up.
She swallowed and nodded.
“This is really serious.” His face said as much. He lowered his voice and glanced around as if checking for hidden cameras in the conference room. “We have enough money to last us for six more weeks, then we’re done, okay? Like, done, done. We’ve got to raise money or all of this”—he gestured around the room—“all of this goes away.”
“I understand,” she said softly.
“Good.”

 
Copyright © 2013 by Palindrome, LLC.