by Sadie Hayes
Then again, the incubator provided everything she’d ever hoped for: She could code all day long and work on whatever she wanted, just like at the Gates Building, but without having the distraction of English classes and other university requirements. She could move into an apartment and not have to deal with being an RCC or eating dining hall food.
But something in her gut didn’t like the idea. As idyllic as it sounded, she … What was it? What was holding her back?
She looked up at Roger. “I’m not sure,” she said.
He put up his hands. “Absolutely no pressure to decide tonight. I just think you should give it some thought.”
The waiter brought out two small plates of baklava.
Amelia cut a piece with her fork, still searching for what it was about leaving Stanford that bothered her so much. It’s not like she had to have the degree in order to do what she wanted. The incubator was what she wanted.
As she chewed on the flaky, honey-soaked pastry, the memory of last Wednesday flashed in her mind.
ZOSTRA. That’s why she didn’t want to leave. She had finally found a group of people with whom she felt comfortable, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to give that up. But how could she tell Roger she wouldn’t commit to Doreye full time because she wanted to play video games with a bunch of computer science nerds?
“Well, look who it is,” Roger said, waving at the door behind Amelia.
Amelia turned around to see who had just entered the restaurant.
Her heart sank.
Sundeep was walking toward their table, his hand around the waist of a gorgeous, perfectly dressed and coiffed blonde girl. Amelia felt her cheeks burning with envy. Of course that was the kind of girl he went for. Why had she ever, ever thought he’d like her?
She forced a smile as the couple approached their table. Roger stood to shake Sundeep’s hand.
“What a coincidence,” Roger said. “We were just celebrating Doreye’s most recent expansion. We hired two engineers this morning.”
“That’s great! Congratulations,” Sundeep said, smiling.
Amelia felt the pride of her accomplishment wash away, replaced by embarrassment.
“We’re celebrating, too. It’s our six-month anniversary.” Sundeep squeezed the blonde girl’s waist and looked affectionately at her. “Roger, Amelia, this is my girlfriend, Lisa Bristol.”
Part III
42
Bookmarks
www.crunchbase.com/company/doreye
CrunchBase
Home > Companies > Doreye
Doreye, Inc.
Doreye (pronounced “Door-Eye”) is a downloadable device and object recognition application created by Amelia Dory and her brother, Adam Dory. In an interview with TechCrunch, Amelia called Doreye “a remote control for the physical world.” The application uses the phone’s native antenna and circuitry to receive and broadcast signals across a wider spectrum of frequencies than the manufacturers intended. As a result, Doreye currently allows the user to “see and control” any electronic device with their phone—televisions, garage doors, and even microwaves are accessible via Doreye.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who tested an early alpha version, called Doreye “… scientifically impossible. I’d sooner believe the Loch Ness Monster exists than I would believe Doreye exists.… And, yet, here I am using it to unlock my car.” The limitations of what is and isn’t possible don’t seem to prevent Amelia Dory from pushing the horizons of Doreye. Next year, Doreye will be able to recognize and find inanimate objects. “Like how a bat uses sonar,” Amelia explains, Doreye will use radio signals and a sleek, lightweight AI (artificial intelligence) to recognize things like your keys, your car, or even your friends.
Amelia Dory holds over a dozen patents related to Doreye. She cofounded the company with her twin brother, Adam Dory, who is the company’s COO and head of business development. They started the company six months ago while freshmen at Stanford. Both hail from Indiana.
www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/fenway-ventures
CrunchBase
Home > Financial Organizations > Fenway Ventures
Fenway Ventures is a venture fund that focuses on seed and Series A investments to start-up companies. The fund also runs a start-up incubator, which is designed to speed the development of entrepreneurial companies by providing mentorship, as well as business and legal support.
Fenway Ventures is currently incubating two early-stage companies: WorldSight and Doreye. WorldSight uses advances in laser technology to affordably treat glaucoma in third-world inhabitants. Doreye is a revolutionary software that the Valley has deemed “The next Google”; it transforms anyone’s cell phone into both a remote control for electronic devices and an object recognition “radar” for inanimate objects.
Key People
Founder Roger Fenway is one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific investors and philanthropists. His earliest company, Ultra Effects, revolutionized the postproduction process of filmmaking and invented the motion graphics industry. He continued to focus on the intersection of creativity and technology by founding Micromedia, which created the software behind products that later became Flash and the Final Cut video editing software. A pet project that Roger pursued in his spare time, Kadence, eventually became the music service that formed the backbone of Apple’s iTunes. He is particularly known for his laid-back aesthetic, notoriously wearing flip-flops to high-profile meetings.
Analyst T.J. Bristol handles supervision as well as business support for Fenway’s incubator. He assists the founders in market analysis and fund-raising. Formerly an intern at Goldman Sachs, T.J. is the son of Ted Bristol, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture investors. T.J. graduated from Stanford, where his father is a trustee and his sister, Lisa, is currently a freshman.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/fashion/weddings/vows/Hawkins-Bronson
VOWS
Shandi Marie Hawkins and Chad Sebastian Bronson
By Margot Langsford
Shandi Marie Hawkins and Chad Sebastian Bronson are to be married at noon on Saturday at the Hibiscus Grove, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. The Rev. Frederick Wilton, an Episcopal priest, will officiate.
The bride, 23, will take her husband’s name. She is pursuing her master of art history degree from Yale University, where she received a bachelor’s degree this past May. She is the daughter of Ronald and Chloe Hawkins of Atherton, California. The bride’s sister, Patricia Hawkins, a sophomore at Stanford University, will serve as maid of honor.
The bridegroom, 27, is receiving his master of business administration degree from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He is the son of Bradley Fitzgerald Bronson and Vivian Wells-Bronson of Darien, Connecticut. Before attending Stanford, he worked as an associate at Deutsche Bank, and received his bachelor’s degree in economics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The couple met three years ago at the annual Young Patrons of Lincoln Center charity ball.
online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405231545674219645274003298926316.html
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | TECHNOLOGY | TOP STORIES
Secrecy Shrouds Gibly Sale and Court Proceedings
BY STEVEN MESSING
In the world of technology, a single blog post can turn success into failure.
Last June, Gibly, Inc. was on the verge of being sold to the Aleister Corporation (TALC.l) for $3.8 billion in what was immediately heralded as the best return on investment in tech to date. Gibly’s lead investor and de facto CEO Ted Bristol considered the sale to Aleister his swan song, and Silicon Valley recognized it as the crowning achievement of Bristol’s remarkable career.
Days after the announcement and out of the blue, the blog TechCrunch broke the tech story of the decade. Gibly was known for being a remarkable software program that acted as a personal assistant, doing everything from transcribing text messages to managing payments with one’s cell phone. The article by TechCrunch revealed Gibly’s much more sec
retive function. A mystery hacker discovered—and leaked to TechCrunch—that Gibly was actually constructed to create a database of users’ private information. Over one hundred million users had their passwords, home addresses, credit card information, and more stored in the Gibly server.
The deal was put on hold indefinitely and Gibly was immediately the subject of both a class action suit and a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission over privacy concerns. At the time of this writing, Ted Bristol was unavailable for comment.
Rumors abound as to the identity of the mystery hacker who took down Gibly, as well as his motivations. Some claim it’s the Internet civil disobedience group Anonymous, while others point toward a covert team at the CIA. Many technology blogs claim it’s either a head engineer from within the company or, least likely, a teenager with time on his hands. Regardless, some lone gunman single-handedly cost Silicon Valley’s best investors billions of dollars and their reputations.
What Gibly was really up to—or why the sale to Aleister was simply put on hold instead of scrapped altogether—is as much a mystery as the identity of the mystery hacker.
43
Liftoff
“Please remove your shoes, sir,” the airport agent said. Adam unlaced his Converse sneakers. He yanked off his socks and tossed them, along with his sneakers, into the gray plastic bin. The security agent rolled his eyes. “Just your shoes.”
Adam grabbed his socks and fumbled to put them back on. He blushed as he tried to avoid the eyes of the passengers behind him who, like the agent, all seemed to be experts at this airport-security drill. Why hadn’t he just followed Amelia to the line without the body scan? Naturally, she had preferred a pat-down to a government-authorized body scan (Who knew what they did with the images? she had insisted), and right now a pat-down sounded far less uncomfortable than the annoyed glare of this security agent.
Adam placed his messenger bag on the conveyor belt. As it slumped against a shopping bag full of wrapped Christmas gifts, Adam felt a tightness in his chest as he remembered that there were rich, happy families who flew to Hawaii to celebrate Christmas. The holidays had always been a dark reminder for Adam that he and his sister had almost nothing to give or receive, and no family except each other.
“Do you have a laptop?” the agent asked.
“Oh. Yes.” Adam had recently inherited a MacBook Air from Amelia, who preferred using Linux over the more polished but less flexible Apple operating systems. Given to Amelia by Roger Fenway as a gift for joining his tech incubator, it was by far the most expensive thing Adam had ever owned. Even weeks after Amelia gave it to him, he kept half expecting someone to come to his door and claim it.
“Please remove it.”
“Oh, right.”
One day, Adam thought, he’d be a pro at this routine and look back and laugh. But for now, this was only the second flight he’d ever taken, and his embarrassment was mixed with giddy excitement. This wasn’t just any flight: Adam and Amelia were going to Maui on a fully paid weekend trip, courtesy of the annual Maui Waves of Disruption tech conference.
Organized by TechCrunch, the leading Silicon Valley blog, the conference showcased thirty promising young companies that would show off their products at the two-day expo. Journalists, investors, and spectators from around the globe paid big money to attend, checking out the new companies by day and networking at huge hotel parties by night.
Adam and Amelia’s start-up, Doreye, had been selected for the expo on November 15, exactly a month earlier, and Adam had hardly been able to concentrate on anything since. A free vacation was nice, but even better, Lisa was going to be in Maui the very same weekend for Patty Hawkins’s sister’s wedding. Adam couldn’t believe his good fortune: Finally, fate or God or whatever was starting to make up for the shabby life he and Amelia had had until now.
He was fairly certain he had bombed all his final exams for the term, and he had a glaring “Incomplete” on his transcript from the outstanding essay to Professor Marsh on what he’d rather be doing than paying attention in PoliSci, but he didn’t care. Who could think about schoolwork when he was about to be on a Hawaiian beach with the super-hot love of his life?
“I think the gate’s that way,” Amelia said when he joined her on the other side of security. He couldn’t help but be impressed by his sister’s calm demeanor. Since the summer, she’d gotten comfortable presenting Doreye and dealing with the press around it, and she seemed to be treating this like just one more interview, as though flying to Maui to stay in a five-star hotel was a normal part of everyday business.
“Aren’t you even a little excited?” he asked as he zipped his bag shut.
Amelia looked up. “Honestly?” Her face broke into a huge grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited for anything.” She had been working around the clock for the past three months, struggling to balance Doreye with her schoolwork. The only break she ever took was on Wednesday nights when she went to the LAIR to play ZOSTRA, the virtual reality game her friend George had introduced her to. Otherwise, her autumn term had been a blur of coding, press interviews, meetings with her engineering team, class, and just enough homework not to flunk out. She and Adam hadn’t had time for movie nights or anything outside of Doreye, and she was glad they had the flight—just the two of them—to hang out a little.
She laughed as Adam pulled her into a playful hug. This was going to be such an epic weekend.
44
Hawaii 2.0
When they exited the terminal in Maui, they saw a man in a suit holding a sign that read Adam and Amelia Dory.
The twins looked at each other. “Our driver,” Adam mouthed with a grin. They had a driver. And that was after the first class seats and flight attendants who had actually known their names and handed each of them a glass of champagne and real silverware for dinner, along with a little package of socks, mints, and a toothbrush.
The Land Rover pulled into the Ritz-Carlton, a magnificent white fortress surrounded by lavish tropical gardens, fountains, and palm trees. Observing that the trunks of the palm trees were wrapped with Christmas lights, Amelia wondered what it was like to sing holiday carols when it was ninety degrees outside. A beautiful Hawaiian woman wearing a white wrap dress greeted them with leis made of real flowers and led them to their room.
Their suite was airy and bright. Sunlight reflected off the teak wood walls and floor. Two queen beds with plush white comforters faced French windows that opened onto a majestic stone-carved balcony overlooking the whitest sand and bluest water Amelia had ever seen.
Amelia walked out onto the balcony. “Adam, come look at this view!”
But Adam was rummaging through his suitcase for his phone charger. He had forgotten to shut off his phone on the plane and the battery had died; he had been stressed about finding a power outlet since landing more than an hour ago. She looked back and saw him plugging the phone into the wall and furiously tapping a text message.
“Who are you so anxious to get ahold of?”
Adam looked up. “I told Lisa I’d text her when we got here.”
Amelia was afraid of that. She knew Lisa was going to be here for the Hawkins-Bronson wedding and was worried she’d be a distraction to Adam. “Are you going to see her?”
“Probably,” Adam said. Who was he kidding? He was going to see her even if it killed him. “This place is so romantic, how could we not hang out?”
Amelia swallowed. She also knew that Sundeep was here, and that Lisa had yet to break the news to Adam that she was secretly seeing Sundeep.
* * *
Amelia’s mind flashed back to that fall’s English class. Of all the classes she rarely paid attention in, the freshman Shakespeare seminar she was taking to make up for the English class she’d failed last spring was the one she paid the least attention to. Which was probably why she’d never noticed that Lisa sat a few rows behind her … until the day the professor had announced partner assignments for the first project, and she had hear
d him say, “Amelia Dory and Lisa Bristol, analyzing Measure for Measure.” Stunned, she had turned to see Lisa, whose face had gone white. Amelia had put her head in her hands. Seriously? What were the chances?
Amelia had planned to dart out of class and e-mail Lisa, hoping this whole project could be taken care of virtually, but Lisa caught up to her and suggested they meet the following evening to review the text and make an outline. Amelia reluctantly agreed.
All the next day, Amelia was on edge. She felt jealous that Lisa got to date Sundeep, and angry that she was also cheating on her brother. Most of all, though, Amelia felt guilty that she still hadn’t told Adam the truth. She couldn’t bear the thought of his sadness and disappointment. It was the only secret she had ever kept from him.
Lisa had grabbed a large table at CoHo, the campus coffee shop, and two boys were flirting with her when Amelia arrived. Noticing Amelia, Lisa blushed and shooed them away, motioning for Amelia to take a seat at the table.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” Amelia said tartly.
“You didn’t,” Lisa said.
Silence.
“So, I was thinking…” Lisa took a deep breath and turned her attention to the text opened in front of her. Her notebook, full of diligent notes in careful handwriting, was also open, and she tapped her purple pen lightly as she spoke. “I was thinking that the analysis of Measure for Measure is always around Angelo and Isabella, but maybe it would be interesting to think about the relationship between Mariana and Isabella.”
Amelia hadn’t actually read the play, but she had skimmed the Wikipedia entry on her iPhone on the way to the meeting, and now she scrambled to remember who Mariana was. “Sure,” she said. “That works.”