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Chapter 5
Sam
I didn’t want to go to New York.
I hated traveling, wasting time on driving to airports, waiting to board, counting the minutes till landing. I was always in a bad mood, irritable on these business trips. But Dana had assured me that if I really wanted this deal, I would have to come to meet the CEO in person.
HRS was of one of the biggest financial services firms in the city. There were thousands of employees all over the country and the company managed millions of dollars. Their current project management tool was cumbersome and took too long to load. In addition, some employees had found ways to tamper with the functionality, to tweak their personal information. My VP of sales, a highly ambitious youngster called Nicholas Booth had been wining and dining the executives of HRS for weeks now and they were finally ready to commit. But the CEO, Hamilton Rees-Smythe, wanted to meet me himself.
So, Dana, Nic and I got on the first plane to the Big Apple.
It was just for one night.
I could handle one night away. I didn’t have to be at the office as it was. I could check what was happening on my phone, even see what people were getting up to in their offices. It had happened numerous times over the years, when trying to convince someone of the superiority of our product, I would whip out my phone and demonstrate how easy it was to check up on one of my employees. I tapped on a name and their webcam was activated, I could see them in their office, observe their screen and compare it to what they logged into the system as doing. There was no room for mistakes. It never failed to impress the top brass. Everyone knew that they couldn’t trust their underlings, no matter how they boasted to only hire the best and the smartest. Even the brightest employees, perhaps especially them, had to be watched.
We were met at the airport by Lori Massey, HRS Head of Legal.
An attractive woman dressed elegantly in a pant suit; her dark hair cut pixie-style. It suited her though, she had the cheek bones and the arresting eyes to pull it off. She was very thin, but she moved with grace and sex appeal.
“Mr. Marshall, a pleasure to meet you.” I shook her hand and introduced the others. I appreciated her direct approach. “I’ll take you directly to the office where you will meet our executive team. Then I will take you to your hotel. Tonight, you will have dinner with Mr. Rees-Smythe himself as discussed.”
I nodded and she took us to two waiting cars.
As we drove into the city, I gazed at the office towers and skyscrapers of the biggest city in the country. I had once considered moving here, launching my business from one of these buildings. But I didn’t. For some reason, I didn’t want to leave Boston, where I had grown up and had developed the idea that would become Luma. I also realized that it didn’t matter where I lived or where my office was, if my product was good. I thought of the many Internet giants who’d had modest beginnings, the stories of the Silicon Valley heroes who founded Google, Apple, and Amazon. It didn’t matter where they worked, where they had developed the ideas that had taken over the world. I could be one of them. I had always believed that firmly.
The seed for Luma was sown when I was still in college. Even though the software as it was now, was quite different from what I’d imagined originally, the core principles were the same. I had fine-tuned the details over the years. We customized the software for individual clients, and I knew Nic had already handled most of the work for this deal.
We spent the morning in meetings with the HRS executive team. Then I left Dana and Nic and went to the hotel that had been booked for us. I worked in my suite all afternoon, working on a proposal for another client and responding to emails. I barely took in the luxuries of the surroundings, which were supposed to impress me. Dana stopped by when she came from their afternoon with HRS. She said they had been treated to lunch at one of the top restaurants in the city. I could see she was slightly drunk; her face was flushed, and she was unsteady on her feet. “Everything is in place,” she assured me. “It’s just you and the old goat now.”
After seven, a phone call to my room confirmed that a car was ready to take me to dinner.
Lori was waiting for me in the car.
She touched my arm in greeting and the driver set off, taking us out of the city.
“I wanted to give a heads-up,” she said. “We love Luma and all of us at HRS are convinced the product is right for us. But ultimately, it depends on Hamilton. He makes the decisions. His word makes or breaks.”
I let that sink in. “So, if I piss him off, there is no deal?”
She nodded. “Essentially, yes.”
“What’s he like?”
She took her time to answer. “He is old school, part of a generation that is slowly dying out. But don’t let his age fool you, behind the grey hair and the stooped back is a razor-sharp mind. He misses nothing.”
She paused. “I will pick you up again at ten.”
The car stopped and my door was opened for me by the chauffeur. I went into a dark establishment with muted lighting and discreet tables fair distances away from fellow diners. I was taken to a table in the back, in a private room, overlooking the Hudson. Rees-Smythe stood at the glass window overlooking the river, puffing at a cigar.
“Steak and potatoes all right? You’re not one of these vegan types perhaps?” his voice boomed at me. He turned around to face me. I guessed him to be in his seventies, with thinning white hair and dark bags under his eyes. He made his way to the table, sitting down with a heavy grunt.
“Have a drink. What would you like? Whiskey?”
When the waiter came, I ordered the steak.
As soon as we were alone, he said, “Lori must’ve warned you. I wanted to get a measure of you first before we signed the deal. Business is all about the people, for me.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
