‘Scout’s honour. But first, we’ve got to sweat this little puppy, show that we’re serious about creating revenue. We’ve probably got three months to demonstrate genuine scale potential and maybe six to get cashflow positive before they turf us out and give our space to the next bunch of hopefuls.’
‘What about the cash they’re investing?’
‘It’s a mixed liquidity round of funding, so not all of their investment is in the form of cash.’
‘Is any of it in cash?’
‘Yeah, there’s still a component but it’s not the focus of the deal,’ Trent adjusted his glasses. ‘Charles is helping me with the equity structure so we’re covered there. I decided against taking cash because then you have to spend it at full retail rates just to buy all the things we’re currently getting at wholesale. We get more efficiencies this way.’
‘Actually, that reminds me. I wanted to ask you if it would be possible to save a few shares for Marty?’
‘Why would Marty get any shares?’
‘I spoke to him before I left and he sounded a bit jaded. He’s not sure who he’s supposed to be when he’s renting out his life to someone.’
‘He doesn’t need shares, he needs a shrink. Besides, we need to see where the dilution lands first. We don’t want to be giving more shares away.’
‘What dilution?’
‘With the new investors and the injection of capital. You’ll probably wind up with more shares, actually.’
‘More?’
‘Well, more in quantity, but they’ll represent a smaller percentage.’ Trent fished his chirping phone out of his pocket and stared at the number. ‘Smaller slice, bigger pie is all.’
‘You need to take that?’ Gavin nodded at the phone.
‘No. It’s my mother. I should definitely not take that,’ Trent pocketed his phone. ‘But remind me to call my father when we get back to the office.’
‘Have you seen some of the new listings?’ said Gavin.
‘I know, right? There’s a makeup artist in Hollywood, a champagne maker in France, a trust fund kid in Mexico and a finance minister from somewhere in Eastern Europe.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘I’m a bit suspect on that one, but Charles reckons it’s probably legit. We might put that one up in our specialist skills section.’ Trent glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘We’ve got plenty of people browsing, but most seem too nervous to commit. Bottom line is we haven’t taken that many bookings.’
‘But Marty told me his life is booked out for the next couple of months. That’s why I want to do something to keep him sweet.’
‘The deckhand is great. He’s absolutely one of our star listings. But surfers are a naturally adventurous bunch so it’s not hard to convince them to take a risk.’ Trent paused to take a slug of his tea. ‘Now we need to move beyond the early adopters, get some slightly more mainstream customers.’
‘Like who?’
‘You ready to do some work, partner?’ Trent pulled a printed list out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it on the plastic table. ‘On the host side, we need more rock singers, fitness instructors and, get this, mothers of young children.’
‘Seriously?’ Gavin put down his tea. ‘You think we should get mums to sign up as hosts?’
‘I don’t. Shanti does.’
Gavin raised an eyebrow as he leaned over and took the sheet. ‘She’s talking to you?’
‘Only about work stuff so far, but I think she’s coming around,’ Trent laughed, but it was of the nervous variety. ‘She gets very passionate about certain things, but then she’s also very focused on the work. We could all benefit from being a bit more like her sometimes. She doesn’t let anything get in the way of her goals.’
‘That part I have figured out,’ said Gavin, resting his chin in his palm.
‘So she ran an analysis of general search queries and the social listening bots she has running. Seems like single women want to take the “married with children” life for a test drive before they sign up for real. It’s a genuinely underserved market.’
‘So now we need a bunch of mums who want to rent their lives out for a week?’
‘Correct. But we’ve got no idea where to start.’
‘Zumba and book clubs.’
‘What?’
‘At my old ad agency, we did a massive research project on stay-at-home mums for some tired old biscuit brand we were trying to re-launch. Turns out these women are doing Zumba and forming book clubs.’
‘Book clubs? That’s still a thing?’
‘Uh-huh, apparently it’s a by-product of the Fifty Shades industrial complex juggernaut. They’re still reading mummy porn like it’s never going to go out of style. A whole industry sprung up around it: sewing patterns for lingerie, light bondage classes, sex toy demonstration morning teas. It’s kind of disturbing.’
‘It’s kind of hot.’ Trent glanced at his watch. ‘So what did you agency geniuses do with the research?’
‘We came up with an awesome new name for these biscuits,’ Gavin splayed his hands like he was unveiling a rabbit. ‘Big Os.’
‘Huh?’
‘Y’know, like orgasms. But the client didn’t go for it.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘Hey, we’ve some dominatrix profiles on the site, so why don’t we target suburban mums, offer them a dominatrix ShelfLife to rent as a kind of Fifty Shades theme-park ride. Then, while they’re away, they can rent out their mummy life to young single women who want to try before they buy. It’s like a twofer.’
‘Twofer?’
‘Ad-speak. Two for one.’
‘Jesus, Gav,’ Trent shook his head. ‘Is everyone in ad agencies as smart as you?’
‘It’s not smart if you do what the data tells you to do, that’s just common sense.’
‘And if the data is telling us that women are dissatisfied with their current lives,’ asked Trent as he rose from the table, brushing crumbs from his trousers, ‘we should be offering them a new kind of satisfaction?’
‘Yes. Exactly. And the crazy thing is that the dissatisfaction is generally caused by the men in their lives.’
‘Wow. You really do learn something every day.’
***
‘Finally. Here they are,’ Charles stood and opened his arms wide as Trent and Shanti made their way to the booth. ‘We were getting worried about you two. C’mon, take a seat, get comfortable.’
There was a little shuffling but the plush, curved banquette easily accommodated the newcomers to the group.
‘I think Trent knows everyone here and vice versa but Shanti, let me introduce you around, starting with myself,’ he made a small bow. ‘Charles Archer-Ellis, entrepreneur and change agent. Originally from the UK but not for some time. And this is Douglas, who’s the ringmaster here at Vertica.’
A young Chinese man stood up quickly. ‘Great to have another girl coder on the floor. We need a lot more of you. Really we do.’ He shook Shanti’s hand so vigorously he had to readjust his glasses.
‘A lot of passion for the tech industry, has our young Douglas. And here on my left is Ping.’ A tall, thin young woman in a clingy black dress offered a smile.
‘Ping is originally from Malaysia – not that we hold that against her – and is developing an autonomous delivery service to help NGOs, which is well and good, but I’m trying to get her to see the bigger opportunity. She could change the world if she put her mind to it.’
‘I see what you did there, Charles. Very flattering,’ Ping held a slender hand out for Shanti. ‘Welcome to Vertica. And to Singapore.’
‘Tran is the brains of Ping’s team,’ Charles swivelled to the other end of the group.
‘Literally!’ Trent broke in.
Charles laughed. ‘Yes, sometimes literally. He joined us from Hanoi, via MIT, to lead the development of the neural control mesh that underpins Ping’s network.’
‘And I’m also looking into sneeze suppressan
t technology. How are you?’ Tran shook Shanti’s hand as the group laughed.
‘What’s with the sneeze joke?’ asked Shanti as she slid onto the banquette.
‘Tran flew another drone into a wall this morning,’ Ping took a sip of her martini.
‘You forgot the part where he was flying it with his mind. How was your flight?’ Gavin leaned over and gave Shanti a peck on the cheek.
‘A bit of turbulence on take-off. The flowers at the airport were a nice surprise, though,’ Shanti smiled and glanced at Trent.
‘Good to see you two made up,’ said Gavin.
‘Trouble in paradise?’ Charles raised his eyebrows as he took a sip of his scotch.
‘I’d call it a robust strategic discussion, right Shanti?’ Trent winked.
‘Yes, let’s call it that,’ said Shanti with a tight smile.
A sequinned waitress appeared and took their drinks order. The bar began filling up with partygoers who all seemed to have been dressed by ‘vulgar & expensive’. From their vantage point by the window, Shanti could see almost the entire city centre, more than fifty storeys below. Traffic snaked its way across the edge of the man-made bay, curling around the floodlit craters of building sites that dotted the city grid like teenage acne. A forest of cranes dominated the skyline while plane after plane swooped gracefully into the nearby airport.
‘Incredible view, isn’t it?’ Charles landed himself next to Shanti.
‘There’s a lot going on out there.’
‘You get a chance to see the offices on the way in?’
Shanti smiled politely. ‘No, Trent took me to the apartments. Shower and change, then straight here. I’ve never been to Singapore before, it looks like an amazing city.’
‘It’ll be great when it’s finished. A bit like this little business you’re building.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, it’s a bit of a construction site right now, but we’ll get some operations people on board to put some process in place, ramp up the marketing and then scale out to other territories.’
Shanti stiffened a little, her eyes narrowing. ‘You don’t think we’ve got the right infrastructure in place?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean the site,’ Charles chuckled and patted her arm. ‘The code is beautiful, so I’m told. Not that we had a burning need to build custom code, but now that you’ve written it and it all seems to be working, we might as well keep it. The important thing to remember is that the business of ShelfLife is not the website.’
Shanti paused, trying to neutralise her expression before Charles had the satisfaction of knowing he had offended her. ‘And what do you think is the business of ShelfLife?’
‘Don’t worry, people generally get that part wrong about internet startups. I’m talking about the business behind the business. That’s where Trent is going to need the most help.’
‘You don’t think he knows what he’s doing?’ Shanti frowned.
Charles tilted his head. ‘He’s got amazing ideas, I’ll give him that, but he doesn’t seem to know much about cashflow, for starters. Or have you seen differently?’
Shanti stole a glance at Trent, who was deep in conversation with Ping. She’d lost count of the number of calls she’d fielded from vendors and suppliers wanting to know when they were going to get paid. Trent had assured her it was how all startups were run. He even seemed dismissive when she tried to get him to focus on their debtor list, so she’d paid several of them in lieu, crediting them with free ShelfLife accounts. Most were yet to be redeemed. It would be a relief, she admitted to herself, to have a grown-up in charge of the financials.
‘Of course, he’s also got his mother to worry about now,’ Charles downed the last of his scotch and straightened his cuffs. ‘Excuse me, but I’ve just spotted an old chum from Europe I’ve been meaning to catch up with. Pretty connected in Belarus. Something to do with the Finance Ministry. You wouldn’t believe the sort of cash people like him have to invest. Lord knows where it all comes from.’
Charles shuffled off the end of the banquette and sauntered across the room. Shanti turned to see Gavin, Tran and Douglas comparing sneakers. Ping still held Trent in her thrall, speaking softly yet earnestly about something that appeared to be very far away.
Shanti excused herself and made her way to the bar, as much for something to do as for a drink, and felt her limbs go heavy. The effort of relocating her life, yet again, while appearing nonchalant had suddenly caught up with her.
‘Whoah, you look smashed, Shants. You okay?’ Gavin went to hold her by the forearm, but she brushed him away.
‘Oh, god, I wish. Just feeling a bit overwhelmed, I guess. This isn’t really my scene. Hey, what’s with Trent’s mother?’
Gavin made a ‘huh?’ with his face and resumed drinking, tapping his feet to the pulsating music.
‘Charles reckons there’s something going on there.’ She raised her voice above the music. ‘He also thinks maybe Trent is not the best person to be handling the money side of the business.’
Gavin shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s not like we’ve had any money to handle, have we?’ It was hard logic to fault, in its own way. ‘Besides, we’re going to need a lot of people to handle all sorts of things. Trent reckons we have to scale up pretty quickly to reach our targets, otherwise it will be harder to attract investment for the next round.’
‘Trent reckons? Or Charles reckons?’
‘What does it matter now, Shanti? We’re buckled in and we’ve just got to do what we need to do in order to get paid,’ Gavin smiled and raised his glass. Shanti held her hand aloft to make an air cheers.
‘Oh! You have got to check out what Tran and Ping are doing with drones. Their startup is called Rotronica and it is literally completely mental.’
‘Gavin, you have got to stop using the word literally when you mean figuratively or I will literally kill you.’
‘No, I’m serious. They’re using mind control.’
‘Literally?’
‘That’s what I said. So, you know how people are using drones to do parcel deliveries? Well, Ping is going to use them to deliver medical aid in Africa and places like that. It’s totally doable, but the bottleneck is the lack of pilots.’ Gavin paused to watch as two girls in microskirts sashayed past, smiling at him over their shoulder.
‘Saving lives in Africa?’ said Shanti, poking him in the ribs.
‘Oh yeah, so she’s developing a system that lets anyone fly these drones just by thinking about it. Almost no training required.’
‘Sounds amazing.’
‘I know. And she’s also trying to build a self-replicating network, where the drones fly out to the edge of their range and deliver the parts for the next village to assemble a new set of drones. And then it just keeps repeating.’
Shanti shook her head in disbelief.
‘Tran’s pretty much a genius at this neural control stuff and Ping is all gung-ho about saving the world.’ Gavin nodded back to where Trent was hanging on every word. ‘I think Trent’s pretty smitten, to be honest. You know he was training to become a doctor?’
‘He was enrolled once, which is not quite the same thing. I think he only did it to avoid working for his parents at their med-tech firm. And look how that turned out.’
‘Anyway, I think it’s cool, saving lives and stuff,’ Gavin shrugged and looked out over the dance floor, which had become more populated. ‘Kinda makes our thing look a bit frivolous.’
‘Hey, I need a favour.’ Shanti tried to sound casual.
‘What the hell is Charles doing with those crazy-rich Asian milfs?’ Gavin turned back to Shanti, who slapped him on the arm. ‘Sorry. Sure, whaddaya need?’
‘Did our investors say anything about getting new equipment?’
‘Dunno. Only got here this morning myself. Why?’
‘I might need a new laptop.’
‘And I need to find some married women who are also mums,’ Gavin nodded to the beat as a clutch of we
althy older Chinese women danced past.
‘Ew, that’s gross.’ Shanti slapped Gavin on the upper arm again.
‘Hey, if you don’t want to keep the dog, don’t get upset when it strays,’ he grinned and she slapped him again, but with more force. ‘I’m kidding. Sort of. You know that search analysis you did for Trent? He said you found a segment of young women who want to test drive motherhood.’
‘It’s become quite a thing. One blogger even has a book deal.’
‘OK, so, I was thinking we convince some mums to rent out their lives for a few days, to give these test-drivers a go,’ Gavin scratched his head to simulate deep thinking. ‘And then I remembered we’ve got a few dominatrix and madam listings now, right?’
‘Supply and demand.’
‘Exactly. We just need a steady supply of jaded, wealthy married women who need a break from their kids and husbands.’
Shanti looked out over the dance floor as Charles shuffled back into view, thronged by older women. A couple were locals and several were expatriates. They preened extravagantly, pearls shaking and curls bouncing as they laughed and air-kissed, handling Charles like a pony for sale.
‘Maybe they’re closer than we think.’
Milf duds
The door swung open and a shaft of light stole into the bedroom. Clare heard the thud of shoe connecting with floor, followed by another. A gentle wrestle, a muffled rustle and a pile of clothes, she presumed, followed them. The covers rose and a body, heavy and ungraceful, wedged its way across the bed, coming to a stop just behind her back.
‘Hmmm.’ A man’s voice. ‘I thought you were still at the resort with the yoga group.’
A hand snaked across her thigh, rode up her torso and enveloped her breast, giving it a firm squeeze. She stiffened, unsure what to say. The part of her that stiffened the most, however, were her nipples.
‘Did you finally duck off to Bangkok to have that boob job you’ve been threatening?’ He kneaded her breast with more conviction, then flattened his palm and pressed her erect nipple back into the soft mound of flesh. ‘The surgeon did a great job, baby. They feel fantastic.’
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