‘Andrei,’ muttered Chris, ‘do you know who this is?’
Andrei held up his hands to ward off the man’s arms. ‘Listen—’
‘You made a fool of me. All these years.’ He reached inside his jacket.
Suddenly Andrei had a flash of déjà vu.
Boston. The Defence of Freedom. A hand reaching for a phone.
But it wasn’t a phone this time. There were three shots. Andrei stumbled back against Chris. The man threw down the gun and ran.
Andrei slipped through Chris’s hands. He was on the pavement, legs in the gutter. A gurgling sound came out of his mouth. His neck was covered in blood, his T-shirt flooded scarlet.
Chris knelt beside him. Bubbles of blood frothed at Andrei’s mouth. His eyes turned up and fixed on him. Chris knew what they were saying. He didn’t want to die, not here, not now, not in the arms of Chris Hamer.
46
FISHBOWL HELD ITS press conference at the time and location that Alan Mendes had set up for Andrei on the following day. But instead of Andrei on the podium, Robert Leib, Chris Hamer and Jenn McGrealy fronted the press pack. The room was packed to overflowing.
Barry Diller had been apprehended that morning, still in the Bay Area. Driving erratically, he had crashed a rental car into a central reservation and had given himself up to a passing police unit before they had even asked for his driver’s licence.
Robert Leib took the microphone to open the press conference. He unfolded a piece of paper.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, reading from the page. ‘Thank you for joining us today.’ He took a deep breath. ‘These are difficult hours, particularly for those of us who knew Andrei Koss personally. Andrei was a brilliant, insightful and, most of all, a thoughtful young entrepreneurial leader who has been cut off in his prime, and the loss is staggering.’ Leib paused, shaking his head reflectively. ‘Staggering. I first met Andrei in my office at LRB and from the moment he spoke I knew I was in the presence of someone truly exceptional. He was a young man of immense intelligence and talent but, more importantly – and this is what made him such a great leader – he was always willing to be challenged. He challenged himself more than anybody. I saw Andrei do great things. I expected and had looked forward to seeing him do even greater things in the years to come. Our hearts go out to his family – Sergei, Anna, Dina and Leo – to his girlfriend, Sandy, and to everyone else who is grieving for Andrei today.’
He paused solemnly.
‘Well, I’m not here to do a eulogy. That’s for another place and another time. There is a business to consider, and even at times like this we are forced to consider it. The board of Fishbowl convened an emergency call this morning. To lose a leader like Andrei is never easy, to lose him the day after our IPO poses an extraordinary challenge. It will take time to find a new leader for Fishbowl. A hasty appointment would be a bad appointment. The board, however, does not believe that at this time, so shortly after our IPO, we can leave the position vacant, even for a brief period. We have therefore decided to appoint an interim CEO to lead the company through this transition.
‘We have, we believe, found someone who has shown by his association with the company that he thoroughly understands Fishbowl, its culture, its ethos and its aspirations. The close personal association that he had with Andrei was also critically important in helping us reach this decision. Over the past seven years he has worked closely with Andrei on all of the most important developments in Fishbowl. I have seen personally how he shared Andrei’s vision and am sure that no one knows better what Andrei wanted or envisaged for the company. In fact, there is no other person, we think, who could take on this role at this time. To our great relief, he is prepared to accept this challenge. We have spoken with Andrei’s family and they are in agreement with our decision. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you the new interim CEO of Fishbowl – Chris Hamer.’
The journalists watched in silence as Chris stood and came out from behind the table. Robert Leib shook his hand and held out the microphone. Chris took it and waited for Leib to take a seat.
‘Thank you, Bob. I’d like to second everything Bob said. First, to Sergei, Anna, Dina, Leo and Sandy, we feel your pain. I’d like to also thank the millions and millions of Fishbowl users who have posted tributes to Andrei on School pages, in the Grotto, on blogs, and in all kinds of places. I know that this has been a comfort to Andrei’s family and to all of us here at Fishbowl in Palo Alto and in our other offices.
‘The Indians of the Amazon …’ Chris stopped, choking up, and took a couple of deep breaths before continuing. ‘I’m sorry.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The Indians of the Amazon … have a tradition that when a great chief dies each person in the tribe brings a flower, a fruit, something, and places it at the foot of a tree. That tree takes on the spiritual aura of the dead man, and by placing their offerings there each person in the tribe pays respect to his spirit. The outpouring of love for Andrei is like those offerings. Fishbowl grew rapidly from small beginnings and, in many ways, despite its size, it’s like a tribe. We’ve lost our leader, our guide, our big brother. We’re grieving.’ He paused and glanced at Jenn McGrealy, who nodded, wiping a tear from her eye.
‘But we have to go on. Fishbowl is a part of the lives of a quarter of the people on this planet. That’s a testament to the tribe Andrei built, and he would be the last person to say that it should stop, even for a day, even for an hour, even for a minute, because he’s gone. Andrei gave us Deep Connectedness. He invented Deep Connectedness. Deep Connectedness never stops. Like the Amazon, it is broad as well as deep, and it flows on.
‘How do we go on? How do we do it? Two days ago we had our IPO, and now the man who brought us to this point, the man who for eight years led and built this awesome company, is gone. In the blink of an eye. When Bob asked me, on behalf of the board and Andrei’s family, if I would consider taking on the role of CEO, my first reaction was “no”. Not even for an interim period. It wasn’t because I didn’t know the company. I first met Andrei when I invested in Fishbowl seven years ago, but I think it’s fair to say that I was always more than an investor. We worked closely on all the big decisions that Andrei made and particularly on the development of the IAP. Andrei used to say I was the éminence grise of the company. He actually put that on my business card.’ Chris waited as a few people smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s what he was like. Who am I to try to fill those shoes? I don’t know anyone who could. But Bob asked me, as the person who has been closest to Andrei in developing the business over the last seven years, to reconsider, and so I did. I was humbled and deeply honoured by the request. I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t refuse. But I can’t do it alone. Andrei, as you know, was both chairman of the board and CEO. Bob has agreed to serve as chairman …’ he paused and glanced at Bob, who nodded gravely ‘… and will work closely with me. Bob has enormous experience as an investor in the tech industry, and worked particularly closely with Andrei and me in the year leading up to the IPO, so I can’t think of a better person to give guidance in these difficult times. Andrei leaves huge boots to fill and I don’t pretend that I’ll be able to fill them, but together with Bob I’ll do my best to guide the company over the coming weeks and months as we search for … not Andrei’s replacement, because there is no one who could replace him, but someone who can step into the role of CEO. In the meantime, until we find that person, I’ll serve for as long as needed. Andrei’s spirit is with us and I’ll take inspiration from that.
‘So? What of the immediate future? Jenn McGrealy will continue to run the day-to-day operations of the company as she has done so awesomely for the past five years. My role is to do everything I can to make sure Andrei’s vision is fulfilled. Andrei’s vision for Fishbowl was unwavering, and I will be guided by my understanding of where he saw the company going in this new phase of growth that has started with our IPO. Fortunately, I was able to hear him articulate his vision just before he was taken from us. As many of
you know, I was with Andrei at the time he was shot down. I was the last person he spoke to. We’d just had lunch at Yao’s …’ Chris frowned, swallowing hard. ‘Excuse me. Just give me a second … OK … We’d just had lunch at Yao’s, which was Andrei’s favourite restaurant. In the early days of Fishbowl we’d often go there and some … some of the most important moments in Fishbowl’s history, some of its most important decisions, happened there. On the day after Fishbowl’s IPO, when Andrei had so much reason to celebrate and so much to look forward to, he asked me to go with him again to have one of those conversations like we used to have in the old days.’
Chris paused.
‘I have exciting news. Andrei had made a big decision. He had decided to roll out the licensing of the IAP – or Farming, as it’s sometimes called – on a wide scale. It’s time to commercialize it. His vision – an extraordinary vision, a challenging vision – was of a world in which every advertiser on every site right across the net would be using the connectedness offered by Fishbowl’s IAP. He asked me what I thought of that. I told him I thought it was bold, visionary, inspirational. I was a little more cautious about our ability to achieve it, but Andrei was adamant. He said we could. Not only that, he said we had to do it. This was what Fishbowl was meant to do. This was what the IPO was for.
‘The first eight years had given us the ability to have that vision – our job in the next few years was to make it come true. We talked about it for a long time. I don’t think I have ever seen Andrei more excited, more energized, or more certain that he was right. It was truly inspiring. I wish all of you could have heard it as well. He told me that he had one big ambition for Fishbowl. We were the first company to IPO at two hundred billion dollars – he wanted us to be the first to reach a trillion in value. He believed that licensing of the IAP for advertising across the internet would achieve that. And I believe he was right. We’ve got a head start over all our competitors. If we get going right now, if we use that head start, I don’t think anything can stand in our way. So that’s what we’re going to do – start right now. And I believe we will get to where Andrei saw us getting. I believe we will be that trillion-dollar company, and probably quicker than he imagined. And when we do, that will be our monument to him, a fitting monument to everything he achieved.’
He glanced at Jenn and Bob, who both nodded emphatically.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the world of cyberspace is changing, and with it the rest of our world is changing as well. No one person can take the credit for this alone, but when history looks back, if there has been one dominant figure in the past decade, it will be seen to be Andrei Koss. He never made any apology for being in the vanguard. Andrei’s gone, but his work continues.
‘Since our IPO only two days ago, Fishbowl has seen another three million people sign up. Already, we have a quarter of the people on this planet. They live their lives in Fishbowl, the Fishbowl that we built over the past eight years.’ Chris paused and looked up, as if the ghost of Andrei Koss was hovering above him. A slight smile played at his lips. ‘Here’s my pledge, Andrei – one day, the rest of the world will, too.’
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Matthew Glass is a pseudonym. He is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Ultimatum and End Game.
Fishbowl Page 44