After On

by Rob Reid

  Just then, Mitchell’s phone hums a staccato pattern that feels like a complex secret handshake. This signals a money-saving opportunity, and he’s broke, so he checks it despite himself. On the screen, a photorealistic five-dollar bill dissolves to a swank Bond-like avatar in a tuxedo. “For her next round, give her a Deep one,” the ad urges in a lurid red font beside a sparkling Deep Rye logo. Below, a bar chart brags that Deep Rye contains 30 percent more alcohol than WhistlePig—the booze in Danna’s hand at this very instant. A caption reads, “More BANG for the Buck!” And in case anyone could possibly fail to catch the drift here, a naked hussy’s silhouette sprawls beneath this.

  “Ewww!” he says, flipping the screen to Danna.

  Examining it, she rolls her eyes. “Works every time. A slug of Deep Rye, and I’m countin’ ceiling tiles.”

  “Their tag line should be ‘Roofie in a Bottle.’ ”

  “What’s the offer?”

  “Five bucks off.”

  “Take it!” she commands, only half-playful.

  “And support this mindset?”

  “Austerity, remember? We’re broke!”

  Mitchell puts the phone back in his pocket, shaking his head. “I can’t believe Bourbon & Branch would work with them.” Them being Phluttr—makers of the sketchy app that just hijacked their conversation. Ostensibly a social network, Phluttr peppers its users with coupons, recommendations, breaking news, handy info, and jaw-dropping bits of hyperlocal gossip, all of it surgically targeted to the user’s interests, location, and/or state of mind.

  “These guys?” As she gestures at the snug bar, Danna’s face lights up with a pained, you-dumb-shit look. And just like that, she’s again gorgeous. “No way would Bourbon & Branch work with Phluttr. It would ruin their name.”

  “Then how does Phluttr…do that?”

  “One of their engineers actually posted a teardown of their coupon-targeting process on Medium awhile back. Anonymously, of course. And the company got it snuffed within an hour. But it’s cached on a bunch of hacker sites. Anyway, start with the fact that Phluttr knows we know each other.”

  “Of course.” Exactly how Phluttr knows this is a matter of widespread speculation, but Phluttr is fully aware of who everyone knows.

  “Next, your GPS tells it where you are, and that you got here a few minutes after me. We’re closely connected. So it figures, we’re meeting each other. Your accelerometer tells it you sat down, so now it figures you’re about to order a drink. Phluttr’s working with Deep Rye, so they know it’s stocked here. It probably knows I’m drinking WhistlePig because I mentioned it in an @reply to a friend on Twitter right after I ordered. And knowing that neither of us are in relationships, its dirty little mind thought ‘hookup’—because no one’s perfect, not even Phluttr.”

  “Yet.”

  “Exactly.

  “And since the Deep Rye people are running a couponing campaign…”

  Danna nods. “Ta-da! Five bucks off. If you’re sober enough to send them a photo of the tab at the end of the night to prove you took them up on their generous offer. And so, Deep Rye starts moving lotsa booze.”

  “And Phluttr’s running hundreds of other campaigns just like this right now, making a pile on each.”

  “You got it. Which is why they were just valued at—what?” Danna instinctively pulls up her phone to dig for the news.

  “Four point two billion dollars,” Mitchell says, saving her the trouble. Word about this broke a few days back, and everyone’s buzzing about it. With fewer than a thousand employees, Phluttr is growing twice as fast as Facebook did at this stage of its history and ringing up huge revenue. Any investor who missed out on the last few monster startups is panicked at the thought of looking stupid again. So although the NASDAQ’s been mighty queasy lately, Phluttr’s financing was a food fight of a bidding war.

  And no one can shut the damned thing off! When Phluttr first launched, its little interruptions were so irrelevant, people installed the app just to chuckle at them, and #TryAgainPhluttr was a hot hashtag. Later, it felt more like a fortune cookie: still very random, but at times weirdly topical, in fun, coincidental ways. These days, Phluttr’s accuracy makes Mitchell’s skin crawl daily. But those deals and coupons save him a bundle. And the app wakes up and barks “Slow down!” whenever the car he’s in approaches a speed trap. And it’ll remind him of the names of any half-forgotten classmates entering the room. It’s just so handy! But then, there’s the dark side. When those randoms arrive, Phluttr might also say, “Ahem: I’m pretty sure these two are screwing.” Or distract you with dumb videos when you should be working. Or coupon you for Dove Bars at your weakest moment. Then you hate yourself a little, and Phluttr quite a lot. But good luck turning it off.

  Phluttr’s other massive draw is “pseudonymity mode.” The company maintains that people are most authentic with their five closest friends—and, with perfect strangers. The draw of strangers has forever fueled vast anonymous forums online. But anonymity also breeds awful behavior, one-off interactions rather than budding relationships, and endless lying about traits and backgrounds. So who really knows if you’re communing with a caring priest, a fellow AIDS sufferer, or a medical expert? Or an actual acquaintance of Person X? An employee of Company Y? Or a fellow closeted gay person of an age, weight, and social background that attracts you? Well, Phluttr knows. And Phluttr can attest that this is a real, well-regarded person who authentically shares your affliction, secret, or curiosity, without exposing actual identities (unless both sides request it). Wrap this up in NSA-grade encryption, and there’s no better place to buy sketchy substances, seek sketchy advice, cheat on lovers, or cathartically confess to the above. Phluttr has now cornered the market in id fulfillment, rumor spreading, and confidential gut spilling—and it’s just getting started!

  Mitchell soon gets Danna talking about her redesign. He needs to rally her optimism, and this is the surest way. He’s also selfishly eager to discuss her work, as it’s simply brilliant! He finds her new interface ingeniously, even adamantly intuitive, all but grabbing his fingers and planting them on the pixels that will draw him to the precise feature that’s most relevant to him, even as other features cry out just as keenly to other users. It does this slyly and playfully. Buttons glint and bulge, and are made almost tactile by the bass-heavy thunks and teeny vibrations that fire when they’re touched. Danna would win awards for this work if anyone actually used their service. But, of course, they don’t. This is Giftish.ly, remember?

  She’s starting to discuss color palettes when something strange happens. Well—two things, really. The first is that a dude in chunky hipster glasses walks by, peering intently, as if he’s lost something. Only he’s gazing at people rather than floors and seat cushions. And it’s not a zippy “where are my friends” scan. No, he’s looking much more…methodically. Perceptibly locking onto each face, then moving on to the next one. The second odd thing is that Mitchell notices this, but Danna does not—even though her “Achilles bicep” of paranoia is Schwarzenegger-grade! But she sometimes drops her guard when discussing her loftiest passions, and color palettes are really up there.

  Mitchell’s about to point out the oddball when Phluttr taps them both. It isn’t the coupon rhythm this time but the “helpful info” vibration pattern. Their screens read, “Heeeeeeeee’s HERE!” And this time, the guess is spot-on, but not weirdly so. When the third employee of a tiny company shows up at a smallish bar, it’s a safe bet he’s here to meet the first two.

  “And so begins another Staples High School reunion,” Danna says as Mitchell’s co-founder Kuba (rhymes with “scuba”) trails the hostess to their table. “Class of…’01?”

  “Hey, we’re not that ancient! We were ’03,” Mitchell says with mock indignation, though, of course, the difference is meaningless to one born as deep into the nineties as Danna.

  “Hi, guys, sorry I’m late.” This sounds like your basic youngish male voice with some kazoo mixed in. Save
for the H, which is so harsh, so jagged, it’s a wonder it doesn’t dislodge the guy’s larynx. Kuba first left Poland years ago, but that accent just won’t quit. And somehow, it’s fitting. Spindly, with deep-set eyes, pallid skin, and muddy hair that mats like a skullcap, he looks like a medieval monk celebrated on the banknotes of some backwater for deriving a theorem.

  After quick greetings and some chair-shuffling, Mitchell gets down to business. “You guys know the situation. We have a huge board meeting tomorrow. And it’s gonna suck.” Well, probably. He also thinks there’s an OK-ish chance it’ll go OK-ishly, but he keeps that to himself. This is a tactical choice. If he doesn’t open on a deeply negative note, these two strident realists will take them there soon enough. So it’s best to start the discussion with a good wallow. He’ll subtly nudge things in an optimistic direction later, so that they’ll adjourn on an upward trajectory. “We need money real bad, just to state the obvious.”

  Kuba (whose strident realism stems from the last eight generations of Polish history), piles right on. “And our only live conversations are with two third-rate VCs. And neither has answered our emails in days.”

  Mitchell nods grimly. “So if we have a path forward, it’s in raising a bit more cash from our main investor tomorrow. And as we all know, micro-VCs just aren’t known for coughing up emergency capital.” This is in contrast to “real” venture capitalists, who do sometimes rescue troubled companies. But real VCs rarely back startups as nascent as Giftish.ly. There was a time—entire decades, actually—when they did. But as the world grew progressively more tech-addled, those big funds graduated from managing tens of millions, to hundreds of millions, to even billions of dollars. And you just can’t deploy that kind of capital with measly little million-dollar bets. Not with a partnership of just four or five guys (and yes, they’re almost all guys). So the big names in venture largely washed their hands of seeding infant startups. Purists argue that in this, they all but stopped doing venture capital. But the management fees on giant funds have crack-like properties. So as big-fund habits became full-blown addictions, seed-stage investing became someone else’s problem.

  Enter the “micro-VCs,” circa 2010 or so. Most are half-successful entrepreneurs, or quite-successful startup execs, who pool some of their own capital with funds from friends and contacts who won huge in the tech sweepstakes. They’ll typically fund a startup with a quarter- or half-million-dollar check (sometimes more), then use that to rally another million or two from other micro-VCs or angel investors. Giftish.ly landed its micro-VC round a bit more than a year ago. Led by a “firm” (which was really just a guy) doing business under the preposterous name of #GreenSprout C@pital, it let them hire a dozen-ish people and make the most of their dismal product concept. But the money’s now gone—and as Mitchell pointed out, micro-VCs aren’t big into bailouts.

  After allowing his team some cathartically gloomy chatter, Mitchell asks, “So is there anything we can point to to get our one serious backer excited at the board meeting tomorrow? Revenue’s not gonna do it. Because for now, it looks like there’s only so many coffees and MP3s people want to buy their friends.”

  “Well, let’s start with Animotion,” Danna offers. This is their gift-recommendation engine, which is based on some audaciously original research Kuba’s wife is doing in UCSF’s Department of Neuroscience. It’s a key element of the service, as you’re far more likely to make a purchase if Giftish.ly can suggest the perfect little something for Person X. “It’s really starting to kick ass!”

  Mitchell mentally gives himself a pat on the back. The surest way to fire up either of these two is to get them gushing about the other’s amazing work. “True,” he says neutrally. “The numbers have spoken.”

  Actually, they’re bellowing. Animotion scarcely worked for months, until Kuba coded up a seemingly minor new insight six weeks ago. Somehow, this caused things to turn the corner. Violently! The recommendations suddenly feel right, even wise, while being completely unobvious. The company regularly asks users to rate its gift suggestions on a scale of 1 (“more random than ROULETTE!”) to 5 (“OMG you’re PSYCHIC!”). Their average rating instantly soared from 1.4 to 4.6. This is like turning a third-string high school quarterback into a Super Bowl champ overnight, and they have no idea what caused it (and if they did, it would scare the bejesus out of them).

  Discussing this, everyone’s spirit starts to rally. When he figures the effect is peaking, Mitchell brings up Danna’s new design. Kuba responds rapturously, and team Giftish.ly is soon awash with renewed hope and ambition. Yes, it’s probably misplaced. But if they’re to have any chance at all tomorrow, they need to bring some optimism to the board meeting. Whether you cynically call this sort of thing manipulation, or charitably call it leadership, Mitchell’s good at it. Of course, he better be good at something because he’s usually the dumbest guy in the room. And please don’t call me harsh for saying that, because it’s his own term. In fact, it’s practically his rallying cry! And it’s not self-hating although I know it sounds that way. It can actually be weirdly empowering. Mitchell also chiefly means it metaphorically. But due to the company he keeps, it’s often an objectively accurate phrase. He sure is the dumbest person at the table right now! But despite that, he’s doing his job rather well.

  That is, until Kuba partly derails things (by trying to be reassuring, in that bumbling way of his). “Look,” he says, eyes aglitter. “No matter what, the ideas will live on. Maybe even in an academic setting!” This is classic Kuba. He’s been about the ideas first and foremost since grade school. So if their technology finds shelter in some ivory tower, it’ll be more than just fine with him! Not that universities are in the business of providing soft landings to failed startups. But Kuba could set up his own damn think tank if he wants. His brilliance as an ideas-smitten developer led to a long and immaculately timed stint at Google, and the upside on his stock options could let him coast forever more. “Because really, maybe Giftish.ly’s taken this as far as it can,” he muses. “I mean, we’re down to three engineers.”

  “And a quarter,” Danna adds, raising her hand—a playful allusion to the help she occasionally gives his team.

  “It’s more like ten engineers when I can get your time,” Kuba tells her, exaggerating politely (though only slightly). “But you need to focus on the redesign!”

  With the conversation now shifting from what’s going right to what’s going wrong, Danna soon harrumphs, “I guess we could always do an acquihire.”

  Arrrgh, the A-word! Mitchell thinks, nodding reluctantly. Far more about hiring than acquiring, acquihires happen when a big company with desperately thin engineering ranks encounters a doomed startup with some technical talent. If the sparks fly, and the price is real cheap, the small fry is “bought” for a trivial sum; its engineers remain employed; its investors redeem pennies on the dollar; and its founders spend the next decade telling babes they just sold their startup to Google.

  Phluttr buzzes Kuba’s phone just as the waitress looms over his shoulder. Glancing at its screen, he lights up, and says, “I’ll have a Deep Rye!” Though as repulsed by icky marketing as anyone, the guy just can’t resist a coupon. Stifling a groan, Mitchell uses the break in the action to cut out to the restroom—allegedly to do the usual but really to have a quick think about the acquihire topic on his own.

  “Dr. Phillips. This is…most unexpected!” Special Agent Hogan uttered this wryly, yet not unseriously.

  “Yes I know, Agent Hogan,” Dr. Phillips replied brusquely. “I’ll wager that you never expected to see me on this side of Kingdom Come.”

  “Not after I brow-beated the Joint Chiefs of Staff into shutting down the ill-advised scientific program that you were championing, and for all intents and purposes running like a veritable fiefdom inside The Military almost fifteen years ago,” Hogan stated flatly.

  “I suppose you’re speaking of Project Maximum,” Dr. Phillips surmised, in the sonorous cadences that regularly me
smerized auditoria full of Ivy League Scientists.

  Agent Hogan curtly nodded his head in agreement, and with it the densely packed red tresses that had made many an enemy she-agent swoon. “Yes, Project Maximum. Your top secret and well-funded attempt to create an Artificial Superintelligence. After I revealed the voluminous risks that such an entity would pose to Human Society, I suspected you’d never willingly enter my presence again!” And with that, the rapt bystanders shifted awkwardly; and a resulting rustle; not unlike that made by an errant flock of hawks in a twilit field; swept the room.

  “I’ll confess, there were dark times when I roundly cursed your name upon settling down to a wee dram of Single-Malted Scotch in some book-lined faculty study,” Dr. Phillips conceded ruefully. “But I have long since realized that you were correct to argue that a Super AI could pose an existential threat to humanity, which made it a not unreckless ambition to pursue, even for Science!”

  Agent Hogan nodded matter-of-factly, pleased to hear this long-overdue concession from an erstwhile rival. “So given that we’ve at last landed upon the same page in this most-deadly-serious of tomes, to what do I owe the pleasure of this urgently convened summit?” he queried.

  Dr. Phillips looked grimly toward a turret-like video camera that skillful workmen had secured tightly to the ceiling. “Activate the DigiScreen!” he tersely commanded its unseen operator.