Fishbowl

by Matthew Glass

  ‘What will I say is the reason?’

  Andrei shrugged. ‘Say what you like.’ It gave him a perverse pleasure to imagine Chris having to hold that conversation. ‘I’m going to be in Los Alamos. Tell Jenn what’s going on and get someone to find me when the statement’s ready.’

  That afternoon, Fishbowl issued a statement repudiating the Journal’s report and saying that while the IPO was going ahead within the next four to five months, it had not yet set a date and was in the process of nominating its bank.

  Two weeks later, after a beauty parade of hopeful firms, Fishbowl announced that it had appointed Mann Lever to lead the issue. The next day, Senator McKenrick announced that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs would be holding a series of hearings to investigate the risks to national security posed by programs creating human impersonations, otherwise known as palotls.

  41

  IT WAS CLEAR who McKenrick’s Senate hearings were aimed at. The only palotl program operating anywhere in the world, as far as anyone was aware, was Fishbowl’s. An hour after the announcement, Leib and Andrei were on a video call to New York with Didier Broule, the senior Mann Lever banker on the IPO who had been appointed only twenty-four hours previously.

  The IPO date, not yet revealed, was widely expected to be by the end of July. Andrei’s immediate reaction was to announce that they were delaying the setting of the date until the hearings were done.

  Broule was opposed to the idea. ‘If we delay, Andrei, it looks like we have something to fear. It looks like we feel that our IPO is dependent on whether this Senate committee gives some kind of green light. If you do anything to give the market the feeling there’s political risk in this business, you can halve your valuation.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘We need to be firm and say, no, we’re going to the market.’

  ‘Surely the market’s going to feel there’s political risk from the fact the Senate’s holding hearings.’

  ‘Not necessarily. These hearing are set for … when is it?’

  ‘Week of May eighteen,’ said one of the junior bankers on the call with Broule.

  ‘If the hearings weren’t going to conclude until after the IPO, then I think we’d have to say, yes, we push it back. We’re planning on the twenty-first of July, right? By the time these hearings are over, we’ll still have time to do our roadshow and get the buzz going. It’s the last two weeks that are golden. Sure, in the meantime, the market will be looking at the hearings, but you’ll make our job a lot harder, Andrei, if you say we’re not going to do anything until the Senate is done. It will sound as if you don’t know yourself whether you’re a risk to national security and you’re waiting to be told. And that’s an impression that will stick. Even if the Senate committee says actually there’s no issue here at all – which is what we would all expect them to say – investors are always going to associate you with a certain degree of political risk. Andrei, my job is advise you how best to get the highest valuation for your business consistent with a sustainable share price. Your best course here is to go ahead strongly and by doing that separate yourself from the political situation.’

  ‘What if the committee does come up with something that prejudices the IPO?’

  ‘Well, if it comes up with something, we can always pull it. We don’t have to go ahead. You can pull an IPO the day before if you have to – and if you have to, you have to, although it’s not something I’d recommend. What’s important now is not to prejudge that, not to make ourselves a hostage to fortune. We should go ahead with our heads held high.’

  Andrei was silent, conscious that Mann Lever had $120 million of fees at stake in the Fishbowl IPO, and that the banker on the screen in New York probably stood to take away a not inconsiderable proportion of that sum as a personal bonus. There was no way he was going to give advice that would put that IPO in danger.

  Andrei was right. Broule knew, as did every banker on Wall Street, that Andrei had procrastinated for months over agreeing to the IPO in the first place. At this point, a delay that might turn into a rethink that might turn into decision to forget about the IPO altogether was the last thing he would suggest.

  Leib pressed the mute button on the computer. ‘I agree, Andrei. Let them hold their hearings. We’ll cooperate in any way we can. But we’re loud and proud and we know our business is totally above board and we’re going to do this IPO. That’s how we should approach this.’

  ‘Guys?’ said Broule from New York, ‘I can see you but I can’t hear what you’re saying. Have we lost sound or are you muting?’

  Leib hit the button. ‘We were muting, Didier. Just wanted to think about what you said.’

  ‘That’s fine, guys. Just checking. Take your time. Mute again if you want.’

  Leib glanced questioningly at Andrei, who shook his head.

  ‘No, we’re OK,’ said Leib.

  ‘Andrei,’ said Broule, ‘what are your thoughts?’

  Andrei’s thoughts were that he wished he had never agreed to the IPO in the first place. But pulling the plug on it was a big step, and in a way Senator McKenrick’s announcement made it even harder for him to do it. He couldn’t help but recognize the truth in what Broule and Leib were saying, even if both of them did have a degree of self-interest at heart. There would always be an association of some kind of national security problem with Fishbowl if he backed down. And the ramifications of that for Fishbowl and his vision of what it could achieve were difficult to estimate.

  ‘I’m going to think about it,’ said Andrei.

  ‘OK, but in the meantime we’ll keep going like we planned. The timelines are tight enough.’

  ‘That’s good, Didier,’ said Bob Leib. He glanced at Andrei. ‘They should keep going.’

  ‘Gentlemen, there’s another way of looking at this,’ said Didier. ‘This could be quite positive. These hearings are focused around your palotl program, which we all know is the thing that is really unique and revolutionary about Fishbowl. It’s unparalleled. When we start going out to talk to investors, that’s what we need to get across to them. The unparalleled revenue capability that this gives you. Now, what’s going to be happening is that just before we do that, we’ll have had a Senate committee sitting there day after day sending that message across. That this is a powerful, important, revolutionary program. Does a Senate committee do that if the thing they’re investigating isn’t pretty important? No. So effectively, we’ve got a third party – the US Senate, no less – saying this is an enormously powerful program. Kind of helps make our point for us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But they’re saying it’s a threat to national security,’ said Andrei.

  ‘But we all know that’s not true. We all know it’s a program with huge commercial application and this threat to national security business is just some senator with a pretty hostile track record trying to big herself up for a hopeless run at the next election. That’s a line I’m very comfortable with. That’s a line our media guys will be taking when the moment’s right, and which we can put out to investors. Given Senator McKenrick’s track record, I think we’ll get a pretty good hearing. As for the power and potential of this program, the senator’s helping us make our case.’

  Leib glanced at Andrei. ‘What do you think?’

  Andrei shrugged. It made a kind of sense. But so, he suspected, would the opposite argument.

  ‘Let’s just hope they call you to testify.’ Broule laughed. ‘I guess they’ll have to. How can you investigate something without talking to the person who has the only living, working example of it on earth?’

  Andrei stared at the banker’s face on the screen. He hoped they’d call him?

  ‘You think that’s going to help?’ said Leib.

  ‘Absolutely. A lot’s going to depend on you, Andrei. You’ll need to give a strong, confident, robust performance at the committee. You’ll need to be charming, natural, likeable.’

  Andrei felt ill.

  ‘We’ll strategize this.
We’ll get you the best coaching we can get. That’s what we’re here for. I’m not talking about some washed-up reporter trying to make a few bucks in his spare time. This is why you hired Mann Lever, Andrei. I can get you a dozen ex-senators to put you through the exact experience of what a Senate committee hearing is. There won’t be a single question McKenrick’s committee asks you that you won’t have answered before.’ Didier paused. ‘When it comes down to it, this is how it’s going to play out. You’re the man with the program. You know it like nobody else knows it. You know what it can do, you know what it can’t do. You control it. Which means this so-called threat to national security … Andrei, in the end, it’s you. Show us that you’re not a threat – and the threat’s not there. All that’s there is one very smart, very likeable guy and the enormous commercial power of what you’ve created. The American dream, in short. All that’s left of these hearings is a witch-hunt by some bitter, technophobic, has-been old senator against the embodiment of that dream. Now, if we succeed in putting it across like that – and remember, we’ll be working the press around this – then in the court of public opinion, who wins?’

  Robert Leib nodded. ‘Didier’s right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right,’ said the banker. ‘And that’s why I’m going to get you a market capitalization of a hundred and twenty billion dollars in four months’ time, Senator McKenrick or no Senator McKenrick. You know what? She’s not an obstacle – she’s a godsend. We just need to make sure your performance when you go in front of that committee is pitch perfect.’

  42

  ANDREI WOKE EARLY on the morning of the hearing. He had breakfast sent up to his hotel room. As he ate, he studied the text of the oral statement that he was going to make. It was the final text that had been approved by his legal team but he made a couple of slight changes nonetheless.

  His parents had come from Boston to Washington to see him the previous night, and they had had dinner together. He wished his father had some advice to help him out, but there weren’t too many lessons from Moscow in the nineties that were going to be of much use in front of a US Senate committee.

  Now he was too nervous to want the breakfast, but ate anyway. He had been told by his lawyer to make sure to get something into him because it might be a long morning.

  At around eight, one of the Fishbowl legal people who had travelled to Washington with him called to see if he wanted to go over anything. Andrei said he was fine. He spent some time doing emails and then went to have a shower and get ready. Someone had organized a suit for him and it was hanging in the wardrobe, ready for him to put on. The tie proved a little harder and in the end he gave up.

  He read over the statement again. A couple of words still worried him and he tried out alternatives but couldn’t find anything that was better. He scrolled the list that he had been given of the committee members. The bankers had pulled together background on each of the senators, although Andrei found it hard to remember who was who. He had some kind of mental block about it. For days he had kept telling himself there’d be time to get it straight but now there was no more time and he still hadn’t got it.

  He watched the time move towards 9.15. When it got there, he stood up and went to the door. Suddenly he felt nauseous and clammy. He stopped for a moment, leaning against the wall, and took a deep breath. Then he opened the door and caught the elevator down to the ground floor, where a car was waiting for him.

  The lawyer who would be with him in front of the committee joined him for the ride, together with Alan Mendes. While Mendes put his tie on for him, the lawyer ran over the procedure one more time. There would be TV cameras in the room. Committee hearings were often half-empty but he was the star witness and it was likely that all the members of the committee would be there, hoping to score whatever point they wanted to score. He would be sworn in and then would be invited to read his statement. After that he would face questions. There was no limit to the time he could be in front of the committee, although it was unlikely to be more than a couple of hours. Finally the chairman would thank him and he would be excused.

  In answering questions, he should be polite, to the point and at all times calm. It was likely that hostile senators would seek to provoke him. He also should try not to appear vexatious or get into a confrontational exchange. If a senator insisted on a view contrary to the one he had presented then he shouldn’t be argumentative. If he felt it was absolutely necessary to resist, he should push back moderately and only once, but finally desist by saying, ‘That’s your opinion, Senator.’ Not that that was guaranteed to bring a line of questioning to an end: the senator might easily riposte with something like, ‘So you’re saying it’s not your opinion?’ and try to provoke a bite-back. Again, if absolutely necessary, he should also refuse to answer a question, although he could expect a vigorous response if he did that. The lawyer would be with him to give advice. He had to remember that every senator dreamed of producing a soundbite that would have him or her on the evening news.

  The car pulled up. Andrei saw the dome of the Capitol rising into a muggy May morning. He and his entourage were guided by a Senate staffer to a small room adjacent to the committee hearing chamber.

  He waited until he was called in.

  ‘Raise your right hand, Mr Koss.’

  Andrei raised it.

  ‘Do you swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Please be seated.’

  Andrei sat. Arrayed across the raised bench in front of him was the full committee complement of sixteen US senators. Behind him was a seating area packed with journalists and spectators.

  ‘Mr Koss,’ said Senator McKenrick. ‘Would you care to address the Committee?’

  Andrei cleared his throat. ‘Yes, Senator.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Andrei took the folded pages of his statement out of his suit pocket.

  ‘I founded Fishbowl along with two Stanford roommates of mine, Kevin Embley and Ben Marks, seven and a half years ago,’ he began, sticking strictly to the text. He spoke about the vision behind Fishbowl, its early days, its growth, its evolution. He explained his idea of Deep Connectedness and the part it could play in bringing the world closer together, making it more convergent, exposing the superficiality of differences and the depth of commonalities. He described his role as seeking to understand what forms of Deep Connectedness his users wanted and meeting those needs in the most efficient way. He talked about Fishbowl’s employees, their skills, their involvement in their local communities through company-sponsored programmes, their commitment to Deep Connectedness. Altogether he spoke for nine minutes, and in those nine minutes he gave as clear and succinct an account of the vision and aspiration of Fishbowl as he had ever given before.

  Then the questions started.

  The first to speak was a Republican senator from New Mexico, Mario Sim, who Andrei seemed to remember from his briefing notes as having been described as a hawk.

  ‘You’ve given us a very complete account of your company, Mr Koss,’ Sim began. ‘And yet I believe you have omitted something. Something that I believe you call “Farming”. Something for which I believe you have developed a program.’

  ‘I believe you’re referring to what we call the intelligent adaption program, or IAP,’ replied Andrei. ‘I did discuss this in my written submission.’

  ‘But not in the oral presentation you just gave us.’

  ‘I’m very happy to, sir.’

  ‘Well, that’s kind of you, Mr Koss,’ said Sim. ‘Tell me how this IAP of yours works.’

  Andrei had practised this. ‘The IAP is a program that aims to bring factual information to the attention of our users through a person-friendly interface.’

  ‘This is what you call a palotl?’

  ‘We use that term to describe what appears to the user. Obviously, there’s a considerable body of programming that sits behind that.’

  ‘Cou
ld you explain more to us about that?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Andrei spoke for a few minutes about the program, giving a broad overview of its functionality and the diversity of its potential applications, trying to hold himself back from getting too technical. The bankers had told him that the senators would interpret that as an attempt to evade the point.

  ‘So what this all really means, Mr Koss,’ said Sim, when he had finished, ‘is that you make people think they’re talking to a real person when they’re talking to a program that’s selling a product.’

  ‘That’s not how I see it, sir,’ said Andrei, carefully trying to avoid antagonizing the senator.

  ‘How do you see it, Mr Koss?’

  ‘The IAP is artificially intelligent, which means it learns as it goes. Just like a person who gets to know you, if it’s engaged in a dialogue with you, over time it learns about you and it learns how to understand your needs and be more effective in communicating with you.’

  ‘Which makes it more effective at selling stuff.’

  ‘Which makes it more effective at doing anything it’s doing. It’s not about selling—’

  ‘It’s not about selling? Excuse me for interrupting, but are you saying it’s not being to used to sell anything?’

  ‘No, it is, but—’

  ‘So, to put it plainly, the idea is it learns about you and gets more effective at selling you stuff.’

  ‘What it does is learn to know what you need and when you need it,’ said Andrei, ‘which, if you want to talk about selling, I see as a lot more helpful than some kind of advertising where you might end up with impulse buys that you’re never going to use. I see it less as selling or advertising, Senator, and more of a service.’

  ‘A service?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A service that tells you about stuff only when you really need to know about it and only when it’s relevant to you. Because the program knows that. It makes it much, much more efficient, and makes it much less likely you’re going to spend your money on something you don’t really want.’