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Anyone else would probably immediately backtrack and apologize for blasting the company CEO’s business choices right in front of him. Not Brooke. Instead, she eyed him with her head tilted slightly and her eyes squinted. Like she wasstudyinghim.
“You’re firing everyone today,” she said.
“Laying off,” he corrected. “Everyone here will be given six months’ severance and a reference letter, as well as referrals. I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley—”
He stopped short, remembering her reference to him being a “dudebro.”Dudebro. Interesting term for it, but it summed up the worst of entrepreneur culture pretty well. He’d tried his best not to become one ofthosepeople, but it sounded like he’d failed. Miserably.
“Just how many people are getting that severance?” Brooke asked, sounding afraid of the answer. He couldn’t say he blamed her. He wasn’t really ready to face that answer himself just yet. But the investors had their consultants review everything, and this was how it had to go if he wanted to keep the doors open.
“We’ll be a small team of thirty-five.”
Her expression didn’t change. She just stared at him, her mouth seemingly stuck in some permanent state of almost-smiling. He wondered if she would have looked anything but bright and cheery if he’d fired her. How did she always look so happy?
“This company has more than two hundred people.”
“Almost three hundred when you count contractors and interns. We have to take drastic measures. I’m sure that’s no surprise.”
“Not many startups succeed.” She shrugged. “I guess nothing surprises me at this point.”
“You’ve had some other positions.”
He looked down at her resume. He’d chosen her because she was the lowest-paid person in marketing, and at first glance, her resume was pretty impressive. But studying it closer, he saw that she’d had very short tenures at each of those places.
“Sometimes it’s a few months, sometimes a year,” she said, seeming to notice his sudden scrutiny. “They’re either ‘going in a different direction,’ merging, being bought out for billions, or frantically scooping water out of the boat before it sinks.”
Ouch. In this case, he knew exactly where his company fell.
“We’re in a sinking boat.” He realized, hearing himself say that, just how weary he sounded. He didn’t want to give up. He’d fight all the way to the end. But Brooke was right—this was a sinking boat, and he was just trying to slow down the inevitable.
“I didn’t mean… Ugh.” Now she sounded weary. That cheery expression wasn’t quite as cheery anymore. He’d managed to crush her spirit somehow.
“No, you’re right,” he rushed to say. “I knew when I founded this company that the odds were against me. For a while there, it looked like we were going to be one of the few that made it. But…I got greedy.”
Brooke’s eyebrows arched. She was looking at him differently now, and he liked it. It even seemed like she might have a newfound respect for him for a second. They’d just met, but she’d worked here long enough to apparently have formed an opinion about him based on what she’d heard.
“So, you’re broke.”
Her comment took him by complete surprise, although he tried not to show it. Never show weakness. That was how his father had raised him. But he was having a hard time not smiling since she’d arrived in the room. Her chipper disposition seemed to be contagious.
“No.”
Did he need to say more? His personal finances weren’t connected to this business. Sure, he’d invested a big chunk of change from his own account to get this sucker going, but his father’s legal team had helped him structure everything so that if this venture tanked, his own bank account wouldn’t be affected.
“I started my first business when I was twelve,” he found himself saying. Was he trying to impress her? Probably. “It was a lemonade stand. By fourteen, I was mowing lawns for money, then turning that into a landscaping business and employing all my buddies who needed jobs. Travers Landscaping became a six-figure annual business. We even had a winter spin-off business where we hung lights for people at Christmas. I sold it when I went off to college and used that money to hire a development team to build my first app.”
It seemed to be working. He was impressing her. He gave himself a mental pat on the back and was all ready to seal this business deal when he saw her staring off to the side, finger and thumb pressed to her lips. She was thinking hard about something.
“That’s it!” She looked at him, pointing briefly before leaning forward.
That always-sunny expression of hers was more animated than ever, he was intrigued to see. She appeared to have had the most brilliant thought ever. Or maybe it was a revelation. He had no idea what was happening here.
“You don’t even see it, do you?” she asked.
Justin shook his head. He was hoping she’d clue him in so they could wrap this meeting up. He had at least twenty people to fire before lunch.
“It’s not what you say. It’s the way you say it. All that stuff you just said about your businesses? Very impressive. But you’re missing a crucial element that would make you so much more likable than all the other scarf-wearing, cappuccino-guzzling tech geniuses in this town.”
Okay,nowshe had his interest. If there was one thing that got his blood pumping, it was finding ways to one-up all the other founders around here. It was part of working in Silicon Valley, he’d learned. You’d never be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos without a hefty dose of competitive spirit.
