Joan Leggett is a petite woman, dressed in one of those sharp Donna Karan outfits that you usually see on ambitious female go-getters on the rise. But the lines etched in her face, her once-blonde – now grey and mousy – hair, and the freckles that have melted into age spots betray her: the only thing Joan is going and getting is older.
Joan is the first person I’ve met at Tao who is competent and organized. She greets me crisply, sits down across the table, and slides a packet of information that she has prepared specifically for this meeting. She walks me through it.
It’s a twenty-minute business presentation, but – as Joan catalogues the company’s financial problems – it feels more like a two-hour horror movie. The kind of movie where you want to walk out in the middle and ask for your money back.
‘Revenue growth over the past three quarters has been negligible,’ Joan says. ‘We hired a lot of people at the beginning of the year, to get ready for the new product launch. But the product is late. So now we have the people, and the burn rate, but no product. Which is expensive.’
‘How expensive?’
‘We’re burning $1.4 million every month. We have $3 million in the bank. No other liquid assets.’
‘So we have enough cash for two months,’ I say.
‘Seven weeks.’
The answer, then. Seven weeks of cash. I have seven weeks to turn around Tao. At the end of those seven weeks, I will either succeed, or I will slink back to Silicon Valley, a failure once again, having proven everyone’s predictions – including my own – correct.
Joan says, ‘Maybe you can convince our VCs to give us more time.’
She means I should ask Tad Billups and Bedrock Ventures for more money. I had the same thought, and it lasted approximately five seconds. I could barely convince Tad to pay for my coach flight on Air Trans. The chance of his sinking another five or ten mil into this shit hole is remote indeed. But I say: ‘Yes, of course that’s always a possibility.’
‘Page eight,’ she says. She waits for me to turn to the page. Now I see a pie chart. It’s labelled: ‘Expense by Department’.
Joan says: ‘Speaking of burn rate, here’s where all the cash goes. Four hundred thousand per month to Engineering. Two to Sales. Three to G&A. Four to Marketing. One to QA—’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Back up. Four hundred thousand dollars each month for marketing?’
Joan looks at me coolly. If she disapproves of this spending, she doesn’t show it. ‘That’s correct.’
‘What the heck are we spending money on? Super Bowl ads?’
‘David has very elaborate marketing plans,’ Joan says. Her tone is without judgement. ‘I assume he went over the details with you.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘He discussed his... strategic vision.’ I point to the diagram on the whiteboard behind me. Joan regards it thoughtfully. She has the sharp look of a museum curator trying to determine a new piece’s provenance. Finally, she says: ‘If you like, I can print an itemized transaction report. You can see where the money actually goes.’
‘That would be very helpful.’ I like Joan already. Super-competent, quiet, authoritative. I say, ‘You’re good, Joan.’ What I want to ask is: How did you wind up in a place like this? But it’s a question that could easily be thrown back at me. And one I’d rather not answer. So I say instead: ‘Why only “Acting Controller”? Why not CFO? Or VP of Finance?’
She presses her thin freckled lips together and looks down. This is apparently a sore subject. She says, ‘There was a CFO. Ellison Jeffries. He left a few months ago. It was all very sudden. I never found out why. Charles was going to hire a replacement, but he never got around to it. So I took over the CFO responsibilities, just not his title.’
‘Well then,’ I say. ‘Congratulations. You’re the new CFO of Tao Software.’
She studies me, trying to decide if I’m joking. When she realizes I’m not, her face brightens. ‘Really?’
Sure, I think silently, why the hell not? Enjoy it while it lasts – seven weeks. But I say aloud: ‘Absolutely. Congratulations. No pay raise, though. Not right now.’
‘I understand. Thank you,’ she says. She stands suddenly. She leans over the table, holds out her hand awkwardly. ‘Thank you,’ she says again.
I take her hand. ‘Work hard,’ I say, trying to sound dour and serious. I don’t want anyone at the company to think I’m a softy.
‘OK,’ she says, and nods grimly, ‘I will.’
She gathers her papers, stacks them into a neat pile, and turns to leave.
As she heads to the door, I say, ‘Joan?’
She stops, with her hand on the knob, and turns to me.
I’m not sure what prompts my next question. Maybe it was Joan’s remark about the Chief Financial Officer, whose role at Tao she assumed when he suddenly departed the company. Or maybe it’s my sketchy knowledge about the CEO who preceded me, and his own sudden disappearance. That’s a lot of mysterious departures, for one tiny company.
In fact, I know very little about the company I now run. I was so relieved to be given this job, I didn’t ask many questions. A restart job in West Florida? Sure, why the hell not, I said.
What was my alternative? Running down the last six months of my and Libby’s savings? Taking out a third mortgage on our Palo Alto house? Continuing my daily routine of flipping through old business cards, dialling lost friends and begging for second chances? No. They could have offered me a position in the seventh ring of hell, acting as chief bean counter for Satan, and I would have said yes.
But now that I’m here – and the job is mine, for better or worse – I might as well learn what I’ve gotten myself into. I say to Joan: ‘What happened to Charles Adams?’
Joan’s response is surprising. Her smile disappears. She looks down at the floor. Her face turns dark and troubled, as if I’ve brought up an uncomfortable topic, like masturbation or necrophilia.
I know almost nothing about Charles Adams, or about his disappearance. I know only the broad outlines, as related to me by Tad Billups the day I signed my employment contract: one Wednesday morning, nine weeks ago, Charles Adams, CEO of Tao Software, vanished.
That’s how Tad described it – he ‘vanished’.
‘Vanished?’ I asked Tad.
Yes, vanished, Tad said. He left his car idling in his suburban driveway, its driver-side door open. He left his house unlocked. He never showed up for work. He left no note. He literally vanished from the face of the earth.
Now, back in the boardroom, whatever warmth I stoked in Joan when I promoted her to CFO thirty seconds earlier has dissipated, as if I’ve wrenched open a window to a gust of wintry December air. She looks at me warily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ I say. I think: Isn’t my question clear enough? What happened to Charles Adams? I try to think of a different way to restate it. I come up with nothing better than: ‘What do you think happened to Charles Adams?’
‘He didn’t show up for work.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Got that part.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. She takes one step towards me, as if to sit once again. She decides against it, and instead remains halfway across the room, an awkward distance for an intimate conversation. Maybe that’s the point.
She says: ‘The police came around at first, interviewed everyone. I answered their questions. But they haven’t been back in a while. I don’t even know if they’re still looking for Charles. Last I heard, they seemed to think he ran away.’
‘Ran away?’ I think to myself: Teenagers run away. Young girls who aren’t allowed to date their boyfriends run away. High school students abused by stepfathers run away. Chief Executive Officers at technology firms do not run away. ‘Ran away from what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Joan says. But her expression indicates otherwise.
I try a different tack. ‘Joan, I’m on your team. I just want to know what’s going on. Any information you have could be really useful.’ I add: ‘Hav
en’t I already shown you a little good faith?’
This last, not-so-subtle reminder of Joan’s recent promotion does the trick. She sighs. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘Charles Adams had... problems.’
‘What kind of problems?’
She shakes her head and sighs. ‘He was a weak man,’ she says finally. ‘A nice guy, deep down – heart of gold – but he was weak. He had a personal tragedy in his family, and then... ’ She stops.
‘And then... ?’
She looks thoughtfully at me, as if deciding whether she can trust me. At last she says: ‘Things went downhill pretty fast. He got involved with bad people.’
My expression must be blank, because she adds, ‘Not software people.’
‘Ah,’ I say.
‘Tough men,’ she continues. ‘You know, out of place at a company like Tao. They’d come into reception, and wait for him to show up. They wore suits, but it was obvious they didn’t fit. Like they were costumes. Charles would come out and greet them, and then he’d leave with them, into the parking lot. And they’d drive off somewhere. He’d come back hours later.’
A familiar-sounding story. Something I had the pleasure of experiencing first-hand, back in my gambling days. ‘Did they hurt him?’
‘Not that I could see. But when he came back, he was always very pale and very quiet. He’d lock himself into his office, and he wouldn’t come out until the end of the day. Sometimes, when I’d leave the office at eight o’clock, he’d still be in there. I knocked once and asked if he was all right. He wouldn’t open up. He just shouted through the door, and said he was fine. That he was working.’
‘What did he get himself involved in?’
‘I really don’t know.’
She’s telling the truth. I see that. ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Thanks for telling me.’ She turns to the door. She stops again, with her hand on the knob, and looks at me. ‘My turn to ask you a question?’
‘Shoot.’
‘What are the chances of turning this place around?’
I think about it. My first instinct is to play hero – to sit straight in my chair, puff my chest, and say forcefully, ‘Excellent. We’re going to do it!’ That’s what the restart executive needs to do: show confidence – everywhere, all the time, to everyone. To make them believe. To hypnotize them with his own will.
But I can’t do that. Not to her. I say, more quietly than I mean to: ‘Not very good. But we’re going to try. I have a lot riding on this, personally. I really have to make it work. I don’t have a choice.’
I’m thankful when she doesn’t ask what I mean, but instead just nods and says, ‘Yes,’ as if what I told her were perfectly obvious.
CHAPTER 3
I spend the rest of the day walking around, getting a feel for the place. I introduce myself to people at random, catching them as they pass through the bullpen, or dropping by unexpectedly at their desks, or even – in one case – stopping them as they finish their business at the urinal. My introduction is always the same. ‘Hi, I’m Jim,’ I say, with a smile and an outstretched hand. (I neglect this last bit when I meet the kid at the urinal.) ‘What’s your name? What do you do here?’ And then they tell me. And then I respond that I’m pleased to meet them, that I’m excited to be at Tao, and that together we’re going to make the company succeed.
Despite my enthusiasm, their responses range from indifference to fear. The indifferent ones tend to be older – corporate veterans. They’re outwardly friendly enough, but I can read their faces: they’ve seen turnaround attempts before, the parachuting CEO du jour, the grandiose announcements, the high hopes that never pan out. No doubt these are the ones surreptitiously crafting their résumés on Tao workstations, keeping an eye over their shoulder in case management should pass behind them. I don’t resent this. As someone with a dim view of managerial competence myself, I’d probably be firing up the word processor too if I were in their shoes. It’s my job to prove them wrong.
Around lunch time, I wander over to Randy Williams’s cube. His desk is on the ‘engineering side’ of the building, near the foosball table and the Ms. Pac-Man arcade game. I ask him to arrange a product demonstration for me.
‘A what?’ Randy asks.
‘A demonstration. Of our product.’
Randy looks at me, suspicious. Am I unaware of the company’s plight, or am I cleverly testing him? He answers carefully. ‘Jim,’ he says, slowly, as if tiptoeing across a career minefield. ‘The product isn’t... finished yet.’
‘I know it’s not finished yet,’ I say, affably. ‘If it was finished, I wouldn’t be here. Right?’
Randy smiles at this very reasonable answer, but then realizes that we’re talking about his own incompetence, and so he shouldn’t grin. His smiles fades. ‘Right,’ he says.
‘But I would like to see what we do have. Even if it’s not completely done.’
Randy sighs. He pushes back his chair, stands up. He calls to someone sitting in the next cubicle over. His lieutenant, no doubt. ‘Darryl,’ he says.
There’s no answer. From my vantage point, I can’t see into Darryl’s cube. Frustration clouds Randy’s face. He leans over the cube wall, plunks his hand down. When he lifts it, he’s clutching an empty pair of headphones.
‘Hey!’ a disembodied voice shouts. ‘What the fuck?’
Randy says into the cube: ‘Jim wants to see a demo. Can you set something up?’
The voice snorts. ‘A demo? Of our piece of shit product? That man is one stupid motherfucker!’
Randy’s smile peels from his face like old paint. ‘Jim’s right here,’ he says quietly.
‘Oh.’ Chair casters squeak, and a head pops over the cube like a prairie dog from a burrow. A kid – he can’t be older than twenty-three, I guess – with long, stringy hair, and pale skin that indicates time spent mostly indoors, looks at me and smiles. ‘You want a demo?’
‘That would be nice,’ I say.
‘Give me ten.’ With that, he’s off, bounding across the cubicle farm with a merry step.
Randy looks at me. ‘He’s a good programmer,’ he explains.
‘I hope so,’ I say.
Ten minutes later, Randy, Darryl, and I are crowded into a small room with no windows. There’s a barnyard funk in the air, which I suspect emanates from Darryl.
We face a long wooden table pushed against the wall. At the centre is an old, unimpressive Dell computer, an LCD monitor, and a dusty keyboard.
The three of us stare at the screen, watching in silence as the computer chugs through the interminable Microsoft Windows start-up process.
‘You ever think,’ Darryl says, ‘how much time we spend, watching computers boot? I mean, as a society.’
Randy shoots Darryl a look.
‘Hundreds of man-years,’ Darryl continues. ‘Wasted. Watching the boot-up screen. We could have built a cathedral in the same amount of time. Or cured cancer. Or put a man on Mars.’
‘I’m sure Jim doesn’t want to hear your thoughts about this, Darryl.’ From his tone, Randy has a clear idea whom he wants to volunteer for that first manned mission to Mars.
Darryl shrugs. ‘Just saying.’
After what seems like eternity, the computer plays a friendly tone to indicate it is ready for use.
‘All right,’ Darryl says. ‘May I?’ He rubs his hands together, steps up to the keyboard, and cracks his knuckles like a concert pianist.
He types. A window appears on the screen. It’s grey, undecorated, without the professional finish that adorns commercial software programs. In plain block letters it says: ‘TAO SOFTWARE – GENERATION 2.0 – P-SCAN SERVICE – ALPHA RELEASE – SVN BUILD 1262.’
Darryl explains, ‘So this is it. At first, we called it Passive Image Scanning Service. David spent like twenty grand on the brochures, but then someone realized the acronym spelled P.I.S.S., so we had to throw those out and reprint them. We changed the name, too.’
‘Smart,’ I say.
‘We call it P-Scan n
ow,’ Darryl says. ‘Want me to show you how it works?’
Randy puts his hand on Darryl’s shoulder and squeezes, in what surely is an attempt to tell his protégé to pause, and to allow Randy to take it from here. But Darryl is oblivious to subtlety. The younger man almost shouts, ‘Hey, dude, you’re squeezing too tight!’
Randy ignores this. Still gripping Darryl, but looking straight at me, Randy says: ‘I just want to go on record and say this is a very early alpha release. It’s not fully functional, and it probably won’t even work.’
‘Understood, Randy,’ I say.
Randy pauses, considering whether another round of ass-covering and expectation-lowering is required. He decides not. He nods at Darryl and says, ‘Go ahead.’
‘OK,’ Darryl says. He speaks quickly, excitedly. ‘Like I said, this is generation two. Generation one was released two years ago, and it was pretty good.’ He stops, realizes something. He turns to me. ‘Hey, Jim, you know what the software does, right?’
Not really. It may surprise you to learn that a turnaround executive seldom cares about the product his company makes. He’s not a technologist; he’s not a programmer; he’s not a salesperson. His speciality – the products he cares about – are companies. By the time a turnaround CEO arrives, the problem is larger than any single product, or any software release, or any botched sales effort. The problem is the company itself. It’s like being a doctor for a patient whose body is riddled by cancers. Concentrating on any single organ is useless. More important is to improve the remaining days, to try to make the whole last longer.
I lie: ‘I know what the product does. But why don’t you tell me, in your own words.’
Asking a programmer to describe software in his own words is like asking a salty old admiral to describe his favourite sea battle: surely, an account of the enemy’s maritime manoeuvres, of the position of the sun in the sky, of the wind in the rigging, is fascinating only to one person in the room.
So allow me to summarize Darryl’s speech.
Tao’s product belongs to a software category called ‘passive image recognition’. That’s a fancy way of saying what it really does, which is quite simple. It recognizes faces. The idea is: you show it a photograph, and it tells you who is in it.
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