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I followed him downstairs and to the street, where an Uber was waiting. We climbed into the back seat and drove off.
“AWS?” I asked. “Amazon Web Services?”
Owen gazed out the window without looking at me. “With all the side-chain expansion, we need to bump up our web hosting. I need you to answer any technical questions that may come up.”
“Thanks for trusting me,” I said.
He shrugged. “Jude was busy. It was either take you or one of the noobies.”
As the car wound through San Francisco, I waited for Owen to bring up what happened. But he was totally silent. When the car pulled up to a restaurant down by the wharf, we hadn’t spoken another word to each other. It was a white cloth restaurant, and I felt under-dressed in jeans and sneakers.
This is why he wore a polo today, I realized.Not because he was trying to impress me.
“We beat them here,” Owen said as we were seated by the hostess. “Not a good sign for a sales team. They should be here early, practicallybeggingto go down on us in exchange for our business.”
The casual reference was too much for me to bear. “Are we going to talk about what happened last night? At your restaurant?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “No?”
“What do you mean, no? You don’t want to talk about it?”
Owen shrugged. “Nothing to talk about.”
“Nothing to talk about?” I replied. “Seriously?”
Before I could say more, the Amazon salespeople arrived. A man and a woman, both young and attractive and smiling. They looked like they were the Homecoming King and Queen.
Owen took over with greetings and introductions. It was like a flip had been switched and he was suddenly Mr. CEO, charming and personable and ready to sing the praises of his company to anyone who would listen. I smiled and nodded along, but most of the conversation at the table was between him and the two Amazon reps.
After the appetizers came, the discussion shifted toward their web hosting services. Owen explained our current plan with Microsoft, and the growth that we expected in the coming months and years.
“Here’s the plan we would recommend for you,” the female rep said with a photo-worthy smile. She slid a binder across the table. “For a company of your potential, we would be able to offer you these services significantly cheaper than if you stuck with Microsoft for your hosting.”
“That’s always nice to hear,” Owen replied. He glanced at me. “What do you think, Amber?”
I opened the binder and skimmed the technical details. “All of it sounds fine to me.” I came to one point and paused. “These are all on-demand scaling solutions.”
“We think that’s best for a company of your size and growth potential,” the male rep said smoothly.
“Our current hosting plan with Microsoft is dynamic.”
The female rep responded to Owen rather than me. “We don’t think that’s necessary at all. In fact, we think Microsoft has been taking advantage of you with your current plan.” She gave a measured chuckle and shake of her head.
“Trust us: this is what you want.” The male rep tapped the binder with a finger.
“Don’t look at me,” Owen said. “Amber’s the one who knows her shit. And no offense, but I trust her opinion more than yours.”
I had been ready to back down and defer to what Owen and the reps decided, but he was looking at me with confidence now. Hedidtrust me. So I pushed the issue.
“On-demand scaling is cheaper on paper, but any time there is a spike in traffic to our platform, surge prices take over. And the reliability is lower while those new servers are quickly spun up. With dynamic scaling, the servers are ready to be allocated any time traffic suddenly increases.”
He male rep’s smile wasn’t patronizing, but it was close. “You are technically correct, of course. But your platform’s current traffic isn’t anywhere near the level that you would need dynamic scaling. This plan is more than adequate.”
“We’re not planning based on our current traffic,” I responded. “We’re planning based onour expected traffic a year from now. With the side-chain projects we are currently sprinting to complete, our traffic will be ten times what it is today. A hundred times, during spikes. And a cryptocurrency trading platform like ours is going to have huge spikes during price movements.”
The female rep let out an exasperated breath. “Owen, I thought we were all on the same page during the preliminary conference call. For things to take such a sudden shift now…”
Owen turned toward me. “Final answer, Amber?”
