ShelfLife

by Barrie Seppings

  ‘Should be fine. We can restrict it to people with basic security or military training to make it safer,’ said Gavin. ‘It’s not like she’s an actual cop or anything,’

  ‘Wait. We’ve got one of those too,’ said Shanti, leafing through pages. ‘From a village on Malaysia’s east coast.’

  ‘Awesome. That’s like number three on our list of requests. The market’s clamouring for cop lives,’ said Trent, swirling the last of his drink and chugging it.

  ‘I reckon we should leave law enforcement alone. It’s just asking for trouble,’ said Gavin. ‘The easiest to manage are lives in some kind of buddy arrangement. Like Marty and Chook. They can take it in turns. One gets a break while the other carries the renter for a week. Then they swap. No need to do a revenue split if they each take an even number of rentals.’

  ‘That’s good, Gav, really good,’ Shanti’s eyes widened. ‘I can set those parameters in the listing so they have to comply or it will be an invalid record.’

  ‘Guys, I love the enthusiasm, I really do, but we’re supposed to be having fun,’ Trent smiled. ‘All this brainstorming and coding will still be waiting for you in the morning. This dance floor will not, so get on it. Oh, hey, back in a sec.’

  Trent shimmied past the bar where a knot of barefoot partygoers, illuminated by a bank of powerful rooftop spotlights, stomped a thin strip of sand into submission. Among the flirting and dancing and high-fiving that was ramping up on almost every square foot of the club, Gavin and Shanti continued to pore over their list, pausing either to laugh out loud or shake their heads in disbelief at some of the lives that were now available to rent: an elephant guide in Phuket, ski instructor in Chamonix, a bartender in Maui, a tattooist in Shinjuku.

  ‘Oh, remind me to rent that one myself,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Which one?’ said Shanti, trying not to spill her drink on the print-outs.

  ‘The Shinjuku tattooist. That’s what I’m going to do with my earn-out.’

  ‘You’re going to be a tattooist?’ Shanti raised an eyebrow. ‘Won’t you need to get a bunch more tattoos yourself?’

  ‘Nah. Well, maybe a couple more. I don’t want to draw the tattoos on people, I just want to own the shop. I’ll have a motorcycle café in the front and do the ink in the back room. On the beach somewhere. Oh, and a boat.’

  Shanti shook her head.

  ‘What? It’ll be my money. I can spend it how I wanna,’ Gav shot back. ‘What are you going to do with yours? Give it to charity, I suppose.’

  ‘Some of it, yeah.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘No, you’ll laugh.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ Gavin took another swallow. ‘Promise.’

  ‘All right, I want a place on top of a mountain where I can sit by myself and nobody is invited.’

  ‘Lame,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Shut up,’ Shanti scowled. ‘Anyway, you should park those dreams until we get out of revenue neutral. If we don’t get some serious revenue in soon, we might get swamped by our own traffic. Our hosting provider issued a capacity warning earlier today. We need an upgrade.’

  ‘Make sure you talk to Trent before you go upgrading anything. I don’t think there’s a lot of gas left in the tank, credit-wise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Trent told me earlier that the closest thing we’ve got to liquidity is the next round of drinks.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Maybe. And it looks like he’s about to spend it on those Eurotrash girls in the bubble skirts,’ Gav nodded to where Trent was dancing and talking with a pod of girls in all the shades of fluoro.

  ‘But we’ve got the traffic. We’ve got all these people signing up. We can’t let him screw this up because of a simple cashflow issue. C’mon, let’s talk to him now.’ Shanti started across the bar.

  ‘Shanti, wait. Let Trent enjoy himself. We’ve all got a night off. I thought we could, y’know, talk about things, now that the site is up and working,’ Gavin placed a hand on her arm.

  ‘Gavin, we’re not just colleagues, we’re business partners.’ She shook her head as she brushed Gavin’s hand away. ‘And if you think the hard work is behind us, you’re facing the wrong way.’

  Shanti crossed the floor. After a moment, Gavin followed.

  ‘Please don’t tell me we’re about to run out of money, Trent. Not when we’ve worked this hard,’ Shanti put her hands on her hips.

  ‘Okay, easy, it’s supposed to be a celebration tonight,’ Trent turned to the group of girls. ‘Excuse me, ladies. One moment, please.’

  He guided Shanti to the edge of the dance floor, where the waves came ashore.

  ‘Trent, if I need to upgrade our infrastructure tomorrow, can I do it?’

  ‘Tomorrow? No, I wouldn’t do it tomorrow,’ he held a hand up to pause her. ‘But very soon we’ll be in a much better position financially. We can take advantage of this amazing traffic you’ve generated and grow ShelfLife like it’s hydro skunk. But please do not use my credit card tomorrow.’

  ‘Jesus, Trent, why didn’t you tell us?’ asked Gavin.

  ‘Worrying about the site is your problem, worrying about the money is my problem, OK?’ said Trent.

  ‘How bad is it?’ Shanti asked.

  ‘Bad? No, not bad,’ said Trent between sips of his mojito. ‘This is good. Very good. We wanted to take on investors, remember? Now we can prove there’s demand for our service, we’re in a much stronger negotiating position.’

  ‘So running out of money is a good thing?’ Gavin shrugged.

  ‘No! Well, yes. Kinda. Look, we’re exactly where we want to be right now,’ Trent opened his arms wide. ‘We’ve done the hard yards, now we just take our amazing site and our awesome list of signups to my guy and say “show me the money.”’

  ‘What guy? The guy who owns the villa?’ asked Shanti.

  ‘My mentor, yes. Part of the agreement I struck with Charles gives him first refusal. He’s flying in tomorrow and he’s very excited. He’s the tap and all we need to do is turn him on.’

  ‘I think we should meet him, too.’

  ‘What kind of money are we looking for?’

  Gavin and Shanti spoke simultaneously and Trent placed a finger in the air while taking a long pull on his straw, taking him almost to the bottom of his glass.

  ‘That is a helluva good mojito. Yes, Shanti, you will meet him. I think you’ll like him,’ Trent turned from one partner to the other. ‘And the kind of money that we’re looking for, Gav, is technically known as “all of it”. Now, who feels like dancing?’

  ***

  Two o’clock was the default business lunch slot in Seminyak. Any earlier signalled you were new in town and yet to tune in to the local pace of deal making among the ‘barefoot and boardshorts’ business mafia. Any later, you struggled to get service. Island wisdom held that if you could afford to live in Bali permanently, among the small-block property developers, graphic designers and furniture exporters, you probably had something working for you, financially, back in the real world. The living here was reasonably cheap but it certainly wasn’t free. On the other hand, choosing Bali hinted that whatever money you had on tap was a casual flow at best. If you had a genuine fire hose you’d be taking breakfast in your spa in Aspen or tying up at your berth in Split.

  Trent had spent his first week in Bali chasing rumours of serious wealth, but found mainly trust-fund kids and early retirees. Charles had provided a few introductions, mainly people in the restaurant business, but they were only interested in expanding their restaurant businesses.

  ‘That’s why I’m not based here full-time,’ Charles explained as he settled into an oversized wicker chair. ‘It’s all playboys and play money. The real money is in the north. This is Asia’s leisure suit.’

  The front of the restaurant opened up onto the street, but a dense row of lipstick palms kept the humming and beeping of motorbikes and vans at bay. White tablecloths and carved artworks completed the sep
aration from the tropical chaos outside. Industrial airconditioning units pushed a chilled breeze through the open dining area and out into the street, where it was obliterated like a vampire in the morning sun.

  Charles scanned the menu. ‘How has your team found the villa?’

  ‘It’s been great, but it’s probably the only part of Bali they’ve seen. I’ve been working them pretty hard.’

  ‘Same partners as before? The hipster and the hacker?’

  ‘Yes, Gavin is doing UX and design. Shanti did the build and is handling the back end. They’ve been fantastic. And they’re totally committed.’

  ‘So what does that leave for you to do?’ Charles glanced up and gave a sly smile.

  ‘Like you said, Charles. Someone has to provide leadership.’

  The waiter took their orders. Most of a bottle of rosé disappeared while Trent got a recap of Charles’ professional trajectory: seventeen years with mid-level consulting firms; offered a golden parachute during a takeover; stole some clients and built them a procurement portal; kept the IP and on-sold it. Between fees from the IP and a growing portfolio (some real estate investments, a couple of tech ventures and a stake in a junior miner) Charles’ tap flowed freely enough for him to search for something new to water every six months or so.

  Their meals arrived and they were spectacular. It was hard to say who had got to Bali first: winners of the private-wealth lottery (like Charles), or the two-and-a-half-star chefs wanting to escape the ‘reviews & revenues’ treadmills in the brutal, fashion-driven dining capitals of the west.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ asked Trent.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Walk away from your consulting job at the big end of town?’

  ‘Money, I guess. Now where’s that wine list gone?’ Charles twisted around in his seat, searching for a waiter.

  ‘You would have been making plenty as a consultant. There must have been something else?’

  ‘Oh, I guess I was feeling stale, wanted to feel a little bit more in control of my life.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do something more dramatic? Shave your head and move to Tibet?’

  ‘I almost did something very much like that, but the red tape made it too much of a ball-ache.’

  ‘So you became an independent consultant,’ said Trent, slicing into his crusted fillet of sea bass. ‘You wanted to feel like you were changing your life, but you didn’t want to lose the life you had, right?’

  Charles leaned back from his steak and looked into the distance for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose, when you put it in those terms. But what’s with the psychoanalysis, Trent?’

  ‘Just testing. To see if you’d be attracted to the service we’re building. I think you would be. I think a lot of people would be.’

  ‘I thought you were developing some sort of marketplace for the sharing economy?’ Charles sliced his steak carefully. ‘Like a house rental or a job swap thing?’

  ‘What we’ve got goes far deeper,’ said Trent. ‘We’ve built a service that lets you change your life. Maybe for a week, but in some cases it’s a little more permanent.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, take our very first paying client.’

  ‘You’re already in revenue?’ Charles put his cutlery down and glanced around the restaurant. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d got that far.’

  ‘And the best part is, he found us. It was a cold lead. Shanti used a profiling algorithm and poured our entire ad spend on re-targeting. Followed him for days until he made an enquiry. We got him signed up and on the plane within a week.’

  ‘What? Like a holiday booking service?’

  ‘Much deeper than that, Charles.’ Trent explained what had happened to Andy, adding, ‘All these augmented virtual theme-park nanny-state experiences aren’t cutting it anymore. Too fabricated. People want something authentic, something genuine. That’s the real product we’re offering here.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Charles. ‘But it’s going to create a lot of margin pressure if you’ve got to pay to attract both sides of the trade. That model only tends to work at scale. Where did you find the surf guide?’

  ‘He’s a friend of Gavin’s. Was going a bit troppo, according to his boss.’

  ‘Who’s this Gavin again?’

  ‘The hipster. Great design skills, really understands the user experience. Came from a big agency in Melbourne. Great guy.’

  ‘You trust him?’ Charles raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Sure. Now,’ said Trent, fishing in his satchel, ‘I want to show you our web analytics, Charles. Our site is taking off, which is why I wanted to talk to you sooner rather than later. I haven’t forgotten our agreement.’

  ‘What am I looking at here?’ said Charles, squinting and holding the printouts at arm’s length.

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to have too many cost pressures on the inventory side. These are the people who have registered on our site since customer number one started sharing his life rental experience on social media. We haven’t even had a public launch for ShelfLife yet.’

  ‘ShelfLife?’

  ‘That’s the name of our company, Charles. We designed our site like shelves in a store. Except our shelves offer a range of interesting and exciting lives from all over the world. If you see one you like, we can rent it to you. You live it for a week, then put back. What do you think?’

  Charles continued scanning the list, flipping the pages until he had reached the end. A waiter refilled their glasses.

  ‘This is remarkable, but there’s an unmanageable level of risk in some of these propositions, Trent. I mean, you’ve got ambulance drivers, stuntmen, porn stars, ski instructors, combat soldiers. These are just lawsuits waiting to happen.’ He folded the stack in half and placed it on the table.

  ‘I’m in violent agreement with you, Charles. Some of these lives are clearly not suitable for our model,’ said Trent, tapping the printout. ‘Most of the careers you’ve pointed out are requests. These are the standard fantasies people have. But the bulk of the list is made up of orders we think we can fill: baristas, photographers, park rangers, tour guides, sportscar salesmen, stockbrokers.’

  ‘Stockbrokers?’

  ‘Just the low-level guys, the pit runners. Our initial range of lives for rent is drawn from people we know, like Marty the surf guide. For the next tranche we’re focussing on lives that operate in a team-based environment so the renter has in-built support during the rental period,’ Trent dabbed his mouth as the waiter cleared the plates. ‘Now, to your point about risk mitigation: Shanti is building a pre-matching algorithm that scrapes a renter’s social profile. This tells us if they have the basic skills for minimum job proficiency. Have they ever worked in hospitality? Did they complete college? Do they have a criminal record? We can pre-qualify for almost anything. It’s the same tech the recruiting industry uses for candidate screening.’

  ‘You have been busy,’ said Charles, showing faint signs of a smile. ‘But I strongly suggest you get some legal counsel on board, and a risk analyst.’

  ‘I’m not sure we have the capacity to add serious headcount right now. We’re only just coming out of beta.’

  ‘Don’t think of them as overheads, Trent, think of them as profit centres. A good RA can help broker a wholesale deal for insurance coverage, which we then break up into individual policies and on-sell to customers on both sides of the transaction, at retail rates. Fabulous margins.’ Charles steepled his fingers beneath his chin. ‘How’s your cashflow?’

  Trent winced inwardly. ‘We’re in reasonable shape.’

  ‘Is that why you traded points in your hot startup for a few weeks’ rental in a half-renovated villa?’

  ‘Well, we’re staying lean to show our management discipline. I’m following the book you recommended. All the founders are.’

  ‘Look, it’s okay,’ Charles raised a hand. ‘I’m here to help. Matter of fact, I want to join you. I love your idea and I’m impressed with what yo
u’ve been able to build in such a short space of time. I’m also impressed with you as leader. I’d like to talk about a more formal investment.’

  ‘That’s great news, Charles. Thank you.’ Trent twisted his napkin under the table in excitement.

  ‘This is a critical time. Your team needs an established base, and you need to focus on growth. To the exclusion of everything else.’

  ‘I totally agree, Charles. The team is loving the scene here. Lots of energy, lots of young entrepreneurs. I think we’d fit right in.’

  ‘Oh god no, not here,’ Charles snorted. ‘This is all make-believe. The only money I’ve put into Bali is in property. Scratch the surface and you’ll find all the startup kids here are spending their parents’ money. A lot of the businesses are just laundromats for nose candy. The infrastructure is unreliable all the way down to the power grid, the corruption levels are well north of annoying and, besides, there are just too many temptations here.’

  Trent rubbed his temple, as if he were trying to erase a problem. ‘So where do you suggest?’

  ‘My services are currently being retained by a very serious group of active investors. They offer tax incentives and government assistance. They are looking for the kind of opportunity your business represents and I’d love to introduce you to them. But first I need to know what shape you’re in financially.’

  Trent took a deep breath. He’d spent so many years constructing elaborate stories of success to mollify his parents that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to level. Or why you’d even need to. Trent pretended to study his wine glass. The book advocated that a founder should project confidence to the world while keeping ‘the kimono open’ with those you trust and rely upon. He knew he was about to rely on Charles. In that moment, he decided to trust him as well.

  ‘Running on vapours. I’m down to my last credit card.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, old chap. In fact, that’s a good sign. Now, can you get your hands on a hundred grand?’

  Trent stopped midway through taking a sip and the wine splashed up over his lips. He tried to pretend that was the way he normally drank wine.