The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel

by Lucas Carlson

  “Buddy, I know things are bad right now, but things will turn around.”

  Andrew started picking up the trash and putting it into an overstuffed trash can.

  “You don’t have to do that,” said David.

  Andrew continued without arguing.

  David reached out and grabbed Andrew’s arm. “Explain it to me again, Andrew. Why didn’t we just say yes to the investor’s offer? Why did we get greedy?”

  “Stop beating yourself up. Pick yourself up and move on.”

  “Okay, Mary Poppins.”

  Andrew picked up a chair that had fallen over and pulled it up to the foldaway card table that David had set up in the middle of the apartment. Megan had taken their old dining room table and moved in with Monica. Andrew pointed at the table and ordered David to sit down. David scoffed and came toward the table, but did not sit.

  “You remember Jeni from MochaToca, right?” said Andrew.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know we’ve been on a few dates, right?” David nodded. “Well things have been heating up between us lately. I mean, I think I really like her.”

  “Great.”

  “No, I don’t mean to rub it in your face. I just want you to know, I think I love her, David. And we’re exclusive now.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I get it, you’re depressed. But can’t you be happy for me?”

  “Sure, I’m happy for you, yay, let’s pull out the party hats. Now can we get back to work?”

  David turned around and started to the kitchen. Andrew got up and pulled on David’s arm to turn him around.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Will you sit down for a minute?”

  David knew exactly where this was going. He had been expecting this conversation for a few days now. He wasn’t planning on making it any easier for his best friend to say it out loud, though.

  “I’m fine, I don’t want to sit. What do you want to tell me?”

  Andrew looked at the floor.

  “The thing is, Jeni also helped me get a job.” Andrew paused. “At MochaToca.”

  David said nothing. Andrew clearly was trying to read David’s face, but David wasn’t giving any clues. He just kept a dead stare into nothingness.

  Andrew continued: “The thing is, it’s just a day job. Nine to five. To pay the bills. I am still one hundred percent in on Cryptobit, I just need to shift to working in the evenings.”

  David still said nothing.

  Andrew continued, “This is probably for the better. I think we need to regroup and rethink what’s next for Cryptobit. Clearly what we have been working on isn’t right yet.”

  David mumbled something.

  “What?” asked Andrew.

  “I,” David said louder.

  “I what?”

  “Not ‘we need to regroup,’ Andrew. I. I need to regroup and rethink. Not we.”

  David pulled away from Andrew’s hand, which was still grasping his bicep. He went over to the sink and started filling a kettle with water.

  “I am still fully committed to Cryptobit, David. I just can’t afford to do it as my full-time job anymore.”

  “Do what you want and who you want,” said David. “Just don’t pretend you are still in it with me when you aren’t. The minute things get hard, my best friend abandons me. I guess I deserve it.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. The world isn’t so black and white, you know. You could get a day job too. We could keep working on Cryptobit on the side until it’s viable to do it full time again.”

  “Now is the opportunity. We are so close and there is so much demand. If we both got day jobs, it would wither up and die. I can’t let this go, this is all I have going for me right now. Without Cryptobit, I have nothing.”

  David scrounged coffee beans from a few nearly empty bags lying on the kitchen counter. He dropped what he could find into the burr grinder and started cranking.

  “I get it, you need money, you’re in love with Jeni. I am happy for you. Really, I am. You need to do what is right for you. And I need to do what is right for me, too.”

  Andrew didn’t respond. He sat at the card table and began staring out the window.

  “I’m not mad at you, Andrew. You have to look out for number one. Just go.”

  Andrew walked out the front door and the screen door bounced three times before settling. A cold winter breeze crept in.

  Chapter 30

  “Heather, I don’t think I can do it anymore,” said David. “I mean what’s the point?”

  David had spent the last few days driving around aimlessly and wasting away on the couch. Eventually he decided to put on some pants and go see his sister. Heather was the only person left in Portland who would still talk to him. The first thing David noticed when he arrived was the smell of stale bleach, vaguely like elementary school halls. He’d always hated that smell. Maybe that was why he had been so hesitant to visit her, he thought. But no, that was a lame excuse. He should have made more effort.

  “It’s like nothing I do is good enough for anyone anymore. I try to make a better life for Megan and she dumps me. I give up one startup to join Andrew and he quits. Fair-weather friends. Everywhere I turn, it’s just roadblock after roadblock—problem after problem. Why can’t the world work in my favor just once? Why can’t I catch a break?”

  David was making a big show with his hands as he paced back and forth in Heather’s room. She sat patiently as David continued.

  “I mean, am I stupid? Is every idea I come up with stupid and I just can’t see it? Maybe everyone around me can see it, and I’m the only one who can’t. I don’t think I ever told you this before, but when we were growing up I always wondered if I was retarded and the reason I was never quite certain was because nobody had the courage to tell me. But now I know I am not a retard. And I know Cryptobit isn’t a stupid idea. Maybe the jellyfish tank was a bad idea, I can concede that. But Cryptobit is different. I mean, we got an offer on Pitch Deck. That’s something. I guess I wasn’t supposed to tell you that because of a stupid NDA, but fuck that. I didn’t get a deal and this is all going to hell, so what’s the point of all the secrecy?”

  Heather smiled softly and said: “Are you done yet?”

  David looked at her with surprise and a touch of hurt. He nodded and sat down at the edge of her bed. It looked like any regular bed, with a dark wood faux finish, but had a remote control that could assist the patient in getting in and out easier.

  “David, I love you. You know I love you. I am your biggest fan, and always will be. I know you are onto something big, and that you are on a path to greatness. But it’s time to get off this pity party. It doesn’t suit you and doesn’t help anything. Either do something about it, or give up like everyone else around you.”

  “Jesus, Heather. Everything in my life is going to shit, can’t you have a little compassion?”

  “Nobody forced you down this path. Nobody made you buy the jellyfish website or join Andrew. You can’t always be playing the martyr. Especially when you made all your decisions freely. You always knew startups were risky. You knew they were hard and were going to test you. You can’t keep blaming the world for your own choices. You’re a brilliant programmer but you’re surprisingly dim when it comes to common sense. It’s time to take ownership and accountability. If it fails, let it fail. If it doesn’t fail, stop complaining. Don’t worry so much—you will figure it out. You always do. You always will.”

  David made himself comfortable on her bed and started fidgeting with the remote control. First the bed went up, and then down. Up, and then down.

  “The nurses hate when you do that, you know?” Heather said.

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  “Since when did you get so wise?”

  “Wrong question, David. Since when did you get so stupid?”

  David threw a pillow at Heather’s head.

  “Hey,” Heather said. “
I have something for you. Can you open the top drawer of my desk over there?”

  David walked over to the desk and pulled out a small box. “This?”

  “Yeah. Mom gave it to me before she died. It’s her old wedding ring from Dad. He had his flaws, but picking a bad ring apparently wasn’t one of them.”

  “Either that or Mom picked it for him.”

  “True. Anyhow, she asked me to pass it down to my daughter. I said I would, but I have no interest in passing along my disease to another generation.”

  “But it’s a recessive gene—if you have kids they probably wouldn’t get it.”

  “Still, I want you to have the ring. I think you will have more use for it than I do.”

  David kissed his sister on the head.

  * * *

  The next day David woke up early, made a large pot of coffee, and began putting his house in order. First he gathered up and threw away the trash. Then he organized what was left of his belongings. By the end of his first cup of coffee, the disaster area had been cleared. He was ready to take inventory. Things weren’t as bad as they had seemed the day before. Megan hadn’t taken his favorite T-shirt, the black one that said: Vinyl is Killing the MP3 Industry. He slipped it on and took a deep breath.

  Determined, David sat at his desk and began checking in on statistics. It seemed like a new article about Cryptobit hit Hacker News every week. Another white-hat cryptanalyst would review it and write his opinion about how novel the approach was, which would draw a ton of new attention. He checked the waiting list. It was over a hundred and twenty thousand now, which was pretty amazing since the Pitch Deck episode hadn’t aired yet. The organic demand had always seemed outlandish to him, especially since he hadn’t spent a dime in publicity. But it kept spreading. News articles about Edward Snowden in mainstream press even started mentioning Cryptobit.

  Next, David checked on his servers. Though he didn’t have to pay for as many servers as a traditional startup might, he still needed servers to manage a few aspects of the system, specifically around registering new customers. The last batch of customer invitations seemed to have finished a while ago (he hadn’t checked in on the system in a few weeks), so David decided to try to play catchup and invite twenty thousand new users instead of the normal ten thousand at a time rule he had set up for himself. As long as people didn’t all sign up at once, it should be fine.

  Finally, he reviewed his bills. As he expected, most of them were overdue. They had attempted to use his credit card, which failed, and were threatening to shut down service if he didn’t pay immediately. He was just hoping that the systems in place were a little more lenient than their angry emails let on.

  To avoid being pulled back into a dark place, he decided to distract himself by cleaning the floors. He pushed the couch to the side and found a load of dust bunnies and a few scraps of paper. Megan had taken their broom, but that wasn’t going to stop David. He picked up a piece of paper that looked to be a receipt from some old Chinese takeout, and began using it to scoop up the dust bunnies. As he poured them into the trash, he recognized an advertisement on the floor. He sat there and stared at it for a few minutes. David tilted his head. It was an ad for the online auction marketplace that he had used to buy the jellyfish website.

  Before he could finish his thought, his phone beeped. He pulled it out and read the screen.

  “Shit.”

  His new user registration servers had crashed.

  “Shit shit shit.”

  The twenty thousand new invitations apparently did want to use his service all at the same time. He logged into the control panel. It warned him to pay immediately or face imminent shutdown. He needed to buy one more server to handle the extra load. He went to the screen to add a server and hovered his mouse over the button. He spent a minute carefully considering the pros and cons. Then he clicked his mouse.

  Chapter 31

  Welcome to Cryptobit, China

  Initializing Encryption: DONE

  Initializing Spoof Spamming: DONE

  Verifying Encryption: DONE

  Verifying Spoof Spamming: DONE

  Your channel is secure. To verify, please start the conversation with the word: Flank

  Your chat partner should reply with the word: Doogie

  China: Flank

  Germany: Doogie

  China: We are going to need a larger team this time.

  Germany: Are you sure we can talk here? You sure it is safe?

  China: Yes, my encryption contact overseas still can’t crack it and his guys are 10x better than the US government encryption guys. Trust me, if there was any chance this wasn’t secure, I wouldn’t be taking it.

  Germany: Ok, well I have been working on it already. I have an uncle who just got out of jail that has a few connections. I think we can get a 5 person crew out of him and his friends.

  China: We are going to need 10 this time. All strong. And people we can trust.

  Germany: It’s going to take some time.

  China: We don’t have time. We need to get the team up to speed and start preparing next week. Our only opportunity is in one month.

  Germany: Ok, I’ll see what I can do. Have you decided on a target yet?

  China: I don’t think we have a choice. It has to be the White House this time.

  Germany: You think we can get close enough?

  China: Yes, but we will need all 10 men to do it.

  Germany: Is this going to be a suicide mission?

  China: I don’t think everyone is going to make it home in one piece.

  Germany: We will need to have hazard pay for the men then.

  China: That’s fine. We only have one chance to do this right.

  Chapter 32

  After talking to Heather, David added a new routine to his days. He started jogging. Though most mornings were drab and wet since the Portland winter had fully settled in, David didn’t mind. In fact, the drearier it was outside, the better he ended up feeling on the inside after his run. The harder he pushed, the less noise his brain seemed to make. The thoughts of self-pity and failure seemed unable to thrive without the vital energy he used up jogging.

  A typical winter day in Portland was a steady, irritating fall of just enough water to annoy you, but not enough to require an umbrella. But this morning was different. The rain started out easy, light even. Halfway through his jog around all five of Ladd’s Addition’s traffic circles, the rain started picking up and before he finished the third circle, it was pouring buckets. David saw a crowd of people standing under the awning at Palio’s Café waiting for the rain to let up, but he kept running. One man made a run for his car, but dropped his keys halfway there and had to double back to pick them up.

  When David got back to his apartment, he began to strip. His white T-shirt felt like it was superglued to his chest. David had to peel it off. He left his damp clothes on the floor near the entrance and walked to the shower, turning on the hot water. He wiped his hands on a towel and walked back, wearing only damp white underwear, to do a quick check on the Cryptobit statistics. He made a promise to himself that he would not check his phone or computer in the mornings before going out running. Checking in on the day’s statistics became a reward for completing his run.

  David pressed refresh. There appeared to be a bug. The night before, there were a hundred forty-five people on the waiting list. He thought back to how much time and effort he had put into the jellyfish website. No more than twenty people would visit that site in a typical day. A day with over a hundred people coming to the site was a huge success. But now his dashboard was reporting 253,435 people on the waiting list. Something had to be wrong. Overnight growth like that didn’t make sense. He pressed refresh. It said 254,102 people. Almost a thousand new signups in a few minutes? Now he knew something was really wrong. David noticed the icon next to his mail program. Five hundred twenty-four new emails in his inbox. He started reading the subject lines.

  Congratulations David!


  Great job on pitch deck

  Too bad about last night

  Remember me from high school?

  Investment interest

  The emails went on and on like this, mostly from people David had never heard of before. He had been so focused on improving Cryptobit and retooling it for email that he had nearly forgotten how badly things had gone on Pitch Deck. After David’s fight with Mark Baxter, he had relegated all corporate communication to Andrew. So he had no idea that the episode had aired last night. Until now. A part of him had hoped that the producers would just cut Cryptobit out and never show it in the first place, but he knew that the failure was just embarrassing enough to make great TV. There was no way they’d cut it.

  David heard a knock on his door. He jetted to his bedroom and quickly put on a pair of jeans that was lying on his bed and an old shirt. He turned off the shower. By this time, it had created a warm sauna out of the tiny bathroom. He cracked the door open an inch. It was his landlady, Helen. Helen was a kind older woman who lived in Unit 1 for significantly reduced rent in exchange for collecting rent from the other tenants and coordinating maintenance.

  “David, can I come in, please?”

  The rain had let up since his run and had resolved into an annoying drizzle, but Helen was wearing a thin yellow plastic poncho and clearly uncomfortable standing outdoors.

  “Of course, come on in.”

  Helen entered and began taking off her poncho.

  “David, you know you are my favorite tenant.”

  David smiled. “Oh I bet you say that to every tenant. Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  Helen made herself comfortable on the folding chair at David’s card table.

  “That sounds wonderful, dear. Thank you.”

  David walked over to the kitchen and filled the kettle with water.

  “David, your rent is almost two months overdue. The owners keep bugging me about it. I keep telling them it’s on the way, but they’re getting more and more skeptical.”

  “I know, I know. I’m working on it.”