The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel

by Lucas Carlson

  The task of going through all of these emails felt overwhelming. It took him three days to respond to each and every one. At least the ones that weren’t clearly spam. It was painstaking, but if all these people had spent their time reaching out to him, the least he could do was offer a personal response.

  The investors mostly seemed to be wealthy individuals who wanted to do an angel investment. However, two of them seemed to be part of a venture capital firm. One of the signatures said he was an associate and the other said he was a general partner. He emailed the investors with a similar note thanking them for their interest in his company and suggesting a few dates for a phone call, but Frank Atari, the general partner from Rocketship Ventures, was the first to respond. Frank asked if David could jump on a Cryptobit chat session with him for a minute.

  Welcome to Cryptobit, Dangerboy

  Initializing Encryption: DONE

  Initializing Spoof Spamming: DONE

  Verifying Encryption: DONE

  Verifying Spoof Spamming: DONE

  Your channel is secure. To verify, please start the conversation with the word: Apple

  Your chat partner should reply with the word: Banana

  Dangerboy: Apple

  Atari: Banana

  Dangerboy: Nice to meet you

  Atari: The pleasure is all mine.

  Dangerboy: How can I help you?

  Atari: Look, David. Let me cut to the chase. I have been following you for a while now. I have known about you since your Hacker News post and landing page. You can look up my account name, I am one of your first users.

  Atari: Security and privacy are a big passion of mine, and when I saw you on Pitch Deck, I knew that I needed to be involved.

  Dangerboy: That wasn’t my proudest moment.

  Atari: Their loss is my gain. How’s the email version of Cryptobit coming?

  Dangerboy: Almost done, I’ve been using it for a while and I think I have worked out most of the bugs.

  Atari: Good. Come to my office on Thursday. I’m based in Seattle so it shouldn’t be hard. Meet me and my partners. Let’s see if we can’t make something happen.

  Dangerboy: Ok.

  Atari: Great, I will call you tomorrow to prepare. Send me the deck you’ve been using and I can give you comments.

  David didn’t know what to expect when he pulled up to the Rocketship Ventures office building in Bellevue, Washington, but he surely thought it would be more grand and awe inspiring than the nondescript building in front of him. But it made sense. Venture capitalists were just normal businessmen like lawyers, bankers or accountants. They were all about the bottom line, not pomp and circumstance.

  He made his way up the concrete stairs and to the second-floor office and saw dozens of beige cubicles sprinkled on either side of a wide open carpeted space. He walked to the front desk and smiled at a slender receptionist who was on a phone call. She reminded David of a young librarian, talking quietly and in hushed tones.

  When she hung up, she looked up and said, “How can I help you?”

  “David Alexander to see Frank Atari, but I’m early.”

  “Ah yes, Frank will be with you in a few minutes. The partner meeting is running a little bit behind. I’ll let his assistant know you’re here. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Soda?”

  “A coffee sounds good, thank you.”

  David second-guessed his decision to drink coffee as he realized his heart was already pounding through his chest. The last thing he needed was coffee. But he craved the warmth it gave him inside; he could use the courage.

  David sat patiently for twenty minutes, but it felt like forever. He drank only half the coffee, but it did the job. A couple of guys with clean-cut slicked-back hair walked out of a conference room wearing dejected frowns.

  “How do you not know Werner Vogels? Come on, you made us look like fools,” said the guy in a crisp suit who looked like a fresh MBA graduate.

  “Sorry,” said the more awkward, nerdy-looking guy.

  “I hope you didn’t fuck this whole thing up for us.”

  “Sorry,” the nerd repeated.

  A few minutes later, a good-looking middle-aged Asian man with a deep tan and short hair came out of the conference room. He saw David and approached with a smile full of charisma and a little mischief.

  “David, thanks for coming.”

  “Mr. Atari, thank you for inviting me. It’s really good to meet you in person.”

  “Please, call me Frank. Still remember everything we talked about?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good, you will do great. Just relax and be yourself. I already told them about you, they just want to meet you and ask a few questions. And whatever you do, don’t freeze up like you did on Pitch Deck. You are with friends here, David. Relax.”

  “Got it. Relax. I’m good.”

  After their Cryptobit chat, David and Frank had talked many times on the phone. Even though David didn’t know who Frank was at first, a quick search showed that he was the real deal. Frank had started a few companies himself before becoming a venture capitalist and had since invested in some impressive security companies.

  Frank had helped David with his pitch deck and coached him on what to say and how to say it. Usually, an entrepreneur like David would first pitch an associate and then, if he passed that test, a partner. The final pitch would be to an entire group of partners, but Frank knew he wanted to invest in David and had skipped those first two steps. This was the big time.

  Frank patted David on the back and led him to the conference room. The room had all the pomp and circumstance that David had found lacking in the rest of the office. The thick wooden conference table was the biggest table David had ever seen in his life. It spanned the thirty-foot length of the room and was six inches thick. The chairs were all made of leather and there were personal power plugs inlaid in the table for every chair. The table was surrounded by middle-aged men and women and a few younger people whom David assumed must have been the associates. A few of the people greeted David with a slight nod or smile, but most were talking to each other.

  “Hello everyone,” said Frank. “Let’s get started with the next company. This is David Alexander with Cryptobit.”

  David stood and stared in the distance. The room went silent. Frank looked frantically at David.

  Then he began: “Hello everyone, it is an honor and a privilege to meet you. Privacy. It is one of the most abused basic human rights we have today. As you and I stand right here, right now, nothing I say is being recorded, and as soon as I finish talking the words are gone forever. This is as natural as breathing. Nobody can hear me outside of this room—I know this because I couldn’t hear a single word from the well-dressed gentlemen who were in here right before me. It seems like you sure did a number on those two.”

  This made all the investors in the room chuckle. Everyone relaxed into their seats and David continued.

  “The nature of the physical world affords us natural privacy based on the simple rules of physics. Sound doesn’t travel through walls. The digital world, however, has a big problem. In the digital world there are no walls, which means there is no privacy. Every bit you create, every byte you transfer, is stored, tracked, analyzed, sold, and marketed. Google openly admits to using words in what should be your private emails and chats to select ads for you. And people have tacitly accepted this, mainly because it has been too hard to do anything different. It has been too hard to protect yourself with things like PGP and GPG. These are just geeky tools for geeks.

  “Cryptobit is a simple tool for everyone else to easily and transparently encrypt all their chats and all their emails. There is no fidgeting with crypto keys and passwords. We encrypt the entire contents and meta-data of emails for you, which makes it impossible for anyone to read or sell your private conversations. And in order to protect you from any hacker or foreign governments who might be able to decrypt any single piece of data, we fill the network with fake
d messages. For every one legitimate message there are ten to a hundred fake messages. Users in our system will never see the faked messages because they will never be able to decrypt them. They’re just junk to hide the signal in the noise.”

  “I have no clue what he is talking about, do you?” whispered one of the white-haired men to the young associate sitting next to him. The associate shrugged.

  “You do this for chat and email?” said one of the men at the side of the table.

  “Correct. We started with just the chat functionality, but the email feature is coming out this week.”

  “How much does it cost to run?” said one of the young women associates.

  “It costs us almost nothing. The system itself is mainly peer-to-peer, we’re just running the signup form in a centralized way.”

  “David, first I’d like to congratulate you,” said one of the older women. “This presentation is night and day better than the one you gave on Pitch Deck. I believe if you had done this well earlier, we probably wouldn’t be here today talking with you. So kudos on that.” As she spoke, Frank smiled. He was sitting like a peacock guarding his prized egg. “But where is the guy who presented with you on Pitch Deck? Andrew?”

  “Yes, Andrew was my cofounder and dealt with the legal, money, and business side of things. But we have parted ways.”

  “That’s too bad,” said the woman. “Startups are always risky, but our job as professional investors is to mitigate that risk using heuristics that we have learned work after many years of doing these kinds of investments. Our general policy is to invest in early stage companies with at least two founders, and we prefer those founders to have a track record of working together. The job is incredibly hard for one person to do on their own, and you never know if strangers will get along. We find the chances of success go up significantly with two or more founders.”

  Frank jumped in: “I am sure Andrew would come back if Cryptobit was venture funded, don’t you think, David?”

  “Yes, of course he would. He just needs to cover some basic living expenses. With venture funding, we could both take salaries and it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  David noticed one of the partners wince at this and begin taking notes in a moleskin notebook.

  “Small salaries, of course,” added David.

  The partners all smiled.

  Chapter 37

  David typed furiously on his laptop. Palio was empty except for an old man reading a book near the entrance. As usual, David sat in the back. He didn’t notice Andrew walk up behind him until he whispered into David’s ear in a terribly cockney Blackadder impression: “Don’t be mistaken about this appointment. I’ve always despised you.”

  David jumped a bit and turned around and smiled.

  “What was so important that it couldn’t wait until the weekend? You know I have a day job now, right?”

  “Not for long you don’t,” said David excitedly. “I did it.”

  “Did what?” asked Andrew.

  David hit return and triumphantly grinned at Andrew from his chair.

  “There, it’s launched. Cryptobit Email is now released. In a few hours, I’ll finish inviting about three hundred thousand new people into the system.”

  “Holy shit. Won’t that crash the signup process?” Andrew grabbed David’s laptop and sat down in the open seat next to him. “Damn. That’s a good-looking new website, too. Since when can you afford a designer?”

  “I’ve hired a few people and bought a few more servers with the money I got from selling the Jellyfish website.”

  “You can’t afford that much money. Shouldn’t you be using it to pay off the credit cards anyway? It’s not like new money—it’s money you’re borrowing on credit.”

  “I won’t need to.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I landed an investment. From venture capitalists.”

  Andrew pushed the computer away from himself.

  “No. Way.”

  “Yes.”

  Andrew stood up, raised his arms, and gestured with his hands to have David stand up too. David stood up and Andrew bear-hugged him.

  “I’m so happy for you. I knew you could do it,” said Andrew as he put David down. “This is amazing. I’m at the best job of my life, I found the love of my life, and now my best friend isn’t going to be homeless anymore. David, we have to remember this moment. We need to take a picture and hang it up on a wall to remind us that things can work out for the best, even when they seem their worst. Let me buy you a coffee. What are you having?”

  Andrew went over to the counter and ordered a few drinks. David pulled out some paperwork from his bag and looked it over. Andrew came back and put a steaming hot black coffee in front of his friend and smiled. David didn’t smile back.

  “There is just one catch,” said David. “The venture capitalists want you to come back to Cryptobit before they give me the money.”

  “What do they want with me? You’re the evil genius behind it all anyhow. I just pushed you into committing.”

  “They liked what they saw of you on Pitch Deck. You are more talented than you give yourself credit for. And…it’s their policy not to invest in companies with a single founder. They don’t want me to partner up with a random MBA out of college who I’ve never worked with before.”

  “David, buddy. I want to help you out, I really do. But my startup days are behind me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing what you’ve done with Cryptobit and I applaud your courage to stick to it when things got rough. But frankly, I was glad when you sent me packing. I was thrilled actually. The biggest thing I learned with Cryptobit was that I don’t have what it takes to do startups. I am happy at MochaToca. Very happy. They treat me great, I get a paycheck every other week, and I have health insurance. I finally got my tooth filled. See?” Andrew pulled back his cheek and David saw a piece of silvery metal near the back.

  “I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy hanging out with Jeni all day. I have never been this happy at a job, ever. I don’t want this to come across the wrong way, so don’t take it personally, but there is no way in hell I would give up what I have going right now. Life is too good. Opportunities like this don’t come along every day for someone like me.”

  David stared at the paperwork. He looked up at Andrew slowly.

  “This is not a nice thing to have,” said David with a long pause. “It’s a requirement. I have the papers here. I need you to sign and say you are coming back full time or this whole thing falls apart. The venture capitalists made it clear that this is non-negotiable. It’s the last thing I need to do to close funding.”

  “I’m sorry, David. I really want to help, but I can’t.”

  “You got me into all this, and now you won’t help me get out of it?”

  “You fired me, David. You. Fired. Me. Forget it.” Andrew stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. He whispered under his voice: “I shouldn’t have come. Jeni said it was a bad idea.”

  “Jeni? What has Jeni been telling you?”

  “Forget it. This isn’t her decision, it’s mine. But for the record, Jeni thinks you are a dreamer, and I am starting to wonder if she is right.”

  “That I’m a dreamer? You don’t seem like the same Andrew I know anymore. That girl is changing you, and I don’t recognize you.”

  “Jeni is the best thing that has happened to me and you had better get your head on straight. If you talk about her like that one more time, it will be the last time we speak. Maybe if you’d spent half as much time working on your relationship with Megan as you did on all your crazy startup dreams, you would know what I’m talking about.”

  Andrew stormed out of the café. David watched him leave, then started banging away at his keyboard again.

  Chapter 38

  David decided that Heather was just the person to pick up his mood for the day. He wanted to surprise her, so he hopped into his Camry and drove across the river to the home. D
espite his self-admonishment to visit more often, it had once again been a while since he had seen her, and with everything going on recently, he wanted to catch her up.

  “Well, well, well. Look at you. I barely recognize you without the beard,” said Belinda. “Still handsome though. You never called last time, honey. You still owe me that date.”

  David was always amazed at how gracefully she handled her wheelchair. It was like watching a hippo dancing as elegantly as a ballerina.

  “I know, sweetie,” said David with a smile. “Things have been so crazy at work, all the ups and downs. I intend to make good on my promise.”

  “Typical excuse. You men are all the same. You tell us that we’re your entire world, and then spend more hours with your buddies in the office than you do with us. Your sister always tells me about how much you work, and how hard you work. She is proud of you, you know. But I tell her that being a workaholic is nothing to be proud of. I’d take a professional failure of a man who is devoted to me over Donald Trump any day of the week. I bet you are a devoted boyfriend though, aren’t you?”

  David let out a single belly laugh.

  “Where’s Heather anyhow? I wanted to surprise her and take her out to lunch.”

  “Heather? I thought she was with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Heather checked out a week ago and told everyone that you had worked things out so you could take care of her.”

  “Why would she say that? You can’t just check out of here. Can you?”

  “It’s not a prison. I don’t know, she said that work was going great for you and you could afford her care now. Isn’t work going great for you? Didn’t you start your own company?”

  “Well, yes, I did, but no. I can’t even afford rent.”

  “She said you were going to take care of her.”

  “Well, I can’t. Not yet, at least. Why would she say that?”

  Belinda looked down at the sidewalk.