Fishbowl

by Matthew Glass

  Chris, however, did have one foible. Like many others made cynical by the contemporary world, Hamer had an almost naive belief in the redeeming power of primitive lifestyles, and had the money to buy his way into tasting those lifestyles for himself, cutting himself off from everything at home in order to immerse himself fully in the experience. Previously he had spent periods living in the Amazon rainforest and with Laplander reindeer herders. During the three months he had just spent travelling, camping and living with Aboriginal communities in the searing heat of a Central Australian summer, he was completely oblivious to events in California. When he returned to Los Angeles that spring, he kept hearing the name of a new website called Fishbowll.

  He didn’t check it out right away. He had a backlog of stuff to catch up on and there were other names people were mentioning to him as well. For some reason it kept slipping his mind. He thought the spelling was silly, too, kind of kitsch and try-hard, and he didn’t think he’d want to get involved with people who thought that was cool. It was only when he was asked what he thought of Fishbowll for the third or fourth time by people whose judgement he respected that he finally sat down and typed the name into his computer.

  To his surprise, he liked the home page. Clean, simple, uncluttered. A fish with big, interested eyes staring out from a stylized bowl. Underneath it the tag: A dating site for the mind. Chris was intrigued. Then he noticed the line on the bottom of the page. In the Fishbowll, you may encounter avatars, pseudonyms and even real people.

  His curiosity was piqued. What was that about? Was this a social networking site, a virtual world, or a game?

  They met at Mang, a fancy Vietnamese restaurant in Palo Alto where Chris often ate when he was in town. The restaurant specialized in serving small dishes for sharing and Chris ordered for the four of them as Andrei, Kevin and Ben watched.

  By now, eight months after Fishbowll had been born, Andrei was receiving calls fairly frequently from people saying they were interested in investing in the site. Since the 4Site deal was sufficient at the moment to fund Fishbowll’s growth, he wasn’t interested in having anyone invest, so most of the calls were short. He did meet a couple of people out of curiosity but found them not particularly knowledgeable and got the feeling they could have been investing in potato chips as long as the chips were being sold on the internet. He walked out of one lunch even before the cocktails arrived. But when Chris Hamer called, he listened. Hamer wasn’t exactly anyone’s notion of an internet god, but Andrei knew about FriendTracker. Here was someone who had actually done something in the internet world, not just invested money in the self-interested hope of walking away with a fortune reaped from somebody else’s intellectual property. Not that FriendTracker had been the world’s most outstanding site. Andrei suspected that the algorithms underlying it had been fairly crude. What he liked about Chris, when they met at the restaurant, was that he admitted it himself.

  ‘I kept telling them,’ said Chris, throwing back one of Mang’s signature mango mojitos and looking around for a waitress to order another, ‘the algorithm was primitive. What else do you expect? What was neat was the way we got people to use the site anyway so we could get their feedback to evolve it. To be honest, the whole thing was just a huge Beta all the way through, just a work in progress.’ He broke off as a waitress approached. ‘Miss, can I have another? Guys? Yeah? OK, another one all round.’ He looked back at Andrei. ‘I was kind of proud of that. You know, I think if we’d kept it going, by today, I think we’d have had a pretty good bunch of algorithms.’

  ‘So do you regret selling?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘I got a shitload of cash for it.’

  ‘Maybe you could have got more if you’d got the algorithm right.’

  ‘Maybe. But what was it? A site where you could see if your friends were shitting on you. Dude, life’s too short. I don’t want to be setting myself up here to give you advice but, guys, what you’ve got to ask yourself is, are you doing the single most important thing you can possibly be doing? I’m not saying there is a one most important thing, objectively, for all people to do. Everyone’s going to define that in a different way. To some people, the most important thing is to change the world. To some people, it’s to have a good time. To the Aboriginals of Central Australia, it’s to honour the Dreamtime. As long as you’re not hurting anybody, define it as you will. But you’ve got to look at yourself, and say, “Me, Andrei Koss, or Kevin Embley, or Ben Marks, does Fishbowll give me the best shot at doing the most important thing that I want to do?” Because if it doesn’t – and a site to see if your friends are shitting on you was fun but it absolutely was not the most important thing in the world – so if it doesn’t, then sell the hell out of that thing and go do something else. Seriously.’ Chris sat back as the next round of mojitos neared. ‘That’s what I’m saying.’

  Kevin nodded. ‘Cool.’

  Chris looked at Andrei. ‘What are they offering you for Fishbowll?’

  Kevin and Ben looked at him as well. They would have liked to know.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Andrei.

  Chris stared at him for a moment, then laughed.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean you don’t ask?’

  Andrei shook his head.

  ‘Well, shit, that is funny.’ Chris shook his head disbelievingly. ‘You don’t even ask?’

  ‘I keep telling him he should find out,’ said Kevin.

  ‘What about you, Ben? Don’t you want to know?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘Andrei’s got seventy-six per cent of the company.’

  Chris picked up his glass. ‘Here’s to not even wanting to know what your company’s worth!’

  Andrei looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I’m not mocking you, Andrei. I’m admiring you. Most guys, the first thing they do when they sniff a little revenue is spend their time talking to VCs. Spend so much time, they usually stop doing what got them that far in the first place, and that’s the end of the business. Pick up your glass, Andrei Koss. That’s a toast I’ve never made before.’

  Andrei warily picked up his glass.

  ‘To you guys,’ said Chris, glancing in turn at each of them. ‘To not wanting to know what your company’s worth.’

  Andrei sipped silently from his mojito and put the glass down. Chris glanced at him, then launched into a story about one of his other start-ups.

  The food came in a succession of dishes that Chris described and explained. He did most of the talking that night. At twenty-eight, with the things he had done and the places he had travelled, he had so much more to talk about than they did. He told them about the time he had just spent with the Aboriginals in Arnhem Land, and his time two years earlier in the Amazon. And there were stories about the big names in the internet world he knew. He did a little name-dropping for Kevin and Ben’s sake. Andrei hardly said a word, just sat there watching and listening.

  That evening, Chris didn’t ask much else about Fishbowll. He didn’t think Andrei was going to tell him anything and he wondered if he might frighten him off. He really didn’t know what to make of the pale young man sitting opposite him, who was silently dipping into the dishes arriving at the table. There certainly wasn’t anything kitsch and try-hard about him, as Chris had expected from the website name. And the fact that he hadn’t bothered to ask what people were prepared to offer for the site was somehow deeply impressive. If anyone else had said that to him, Chris wouldn’t have believed it, but for some reason he suspected that in Andrei’s case it was true. Chris was intrigued, deeply intrigued, both by Fishbowll and its founder. He wanted to know more about Andrei Koss and his vision for the website. Yet he had no idea what Andrei was thinking or whether he had any interest at all in prolonging the conversation with him.

  He didn’t know Andrei well enough yet to realize that if Andrei had had no interest in what he had to say, he would have got up and left.

  So it was a genuine surprise to Chris when Andrei called him a
couple of days later and asked if he could talk with him again. Although he had no plans to go up to the Bay Area, Chris immediately said he was going to be in Palo Alto for a meeting early the following week and could make time to see him. This time, rather than suggesting a place, he asked where Andrei would like to meet. Andrei named the first place that came into his head.

  16

  IT WAS HAMER’S first time at Yao’s. He could see that the waiters knew Andrei well. Chris ordered kung pao chicken. Andrei didn’t even need to say that he wanted the chicken and shrimp fried noodles.

  ‘I’m running what appears to be a large and growing business,’ said Andrei matter-of-factly as soon as the orders were taken. ‘I’m twenty-one years old and I’m well aware that I have no experience that prepares me for this.’

  Chris nodded. He was impressed both by Andrei’s insight and his honesty. At the same age, still in college and running his own first start-up, he had messed things up precisely because he had lacked both. He was also interested in the way Andrei had made a statement of apparent humility come out more as an assertion of control. Chris had seen a lot of guys running start-ups. The more he saw of Andrei Koss, the more interested in Fishbowll he became.

  ‘It’s not that easy to find disinterested advice,’ said Andrei.

  ‘And you think I’ll offer it to you?’

  ‘You’re the first guy I’ve met who hasn’t tried to buy my company.’

  Chris laughed. ‘Full disclosure. You know I’m an investor.’

  Andrei nodded.

  ‘OK,’ said Chris. ‘Well, let me see how I can help you. What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know what I’m not doing that I should be doing. I want to know what I am doing that I shouldn’t be.’

  ‘Good questions. I had to go through two start-ups before I learned those lessons.’

  ‘I’ll pay you for your time,’ said Andrei quickly.

  Chris laughed again.

  ‘I don’t expect any favours.’

  Chris leaned forward. ‘Andrei, you’ll be doing me the favour. But I need to know some numbers. I need to get some sense of the scale of what you’re doing. How many users have you got?’ He saw Andrei hesitate. ‘It’s confidential, I promise. But, full disclosure again, I may use the numbers myself to decide whether to make you an offer of some cash. I won’t divulge anything to anyone else.’

  Andrei hesitated a little longer. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thirty-two million.’

  ‘How long have you been running?’

  ‘Eight months, more or less.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘They have an extraordinarily high usage rate. And we have an exceptional geographic and demographic diversity, which generates a lot of demands. I’ve got a thousand things people are asking for.’

  ‘And the things you want to do?’

  ‘I’ve got a thousand of those as well.’

  Their dishes arrived.

  ‘Tell me your vision,’ said Chris, digging into his kung pao chicken.

  ‘It’s there on the website.’

  ‘Tell me in your own words.’

  ‘They are my words.’

  ‘Andrei, just tell me.’

  ‘Connectedness,’ said Andrei. ‘Most social networks put you in touch with people you know, and if you’re lucky, through them you might connect with other people. That’s still a relatively contained and insulated subset of the total group you may want to connect with. Group pages and chatrooms are full of people who get attracted to something momentarily and aren’t committed. I want to provide an avenue to find your way to people who you would want to talk to, because they’re interested in the things that are really important to you, but who you would never normally find. And I want you to be able to do it right now, today, this instant, and not have to wait for chance connections through friends of friends of friends that probably won’t even ever happen. I think of it as Deep Connectedness – taking you wherever and to whoever you want to go to in the world.’

  ‘The other night I asked you if it’s important,’ said Chris. ‘I asked if it’s the most important thing you could be doing. And you’re telling me there’s this Deep Connectedness you’re trying to facilitate – which I totally get and which I think is totally cool – but my question is, how important is that?’

  ‘World changingly,’ said Andrei without hesitation.

  Chris smiled. ‘That’s what everyone always says. I’ve seen guys setting up an internet site to sell socks and they think they’re going to change the world. I tell them, “Dude, it’s socks. I already wear socks.”’

  ‘But you don’t already have Deep Connectedness. This is new. It’s something that makes the world a new place. We still see the world as divided up by place. That’s a way of thinking that comes out of old communication, where you’re limited by physicality.’

  ‘Is it? The telephone’s been around for over a century.’

  ‘And that wasn’t enough to change it. Why? Because I may have a phone, and I may be able to connect with any number in the world – but I don’t know who to call. There’s no one helping me find out. The places we live, those are accidents. They’re not the real things that unite or divide us. The things that do that are ideas, values, aspirations. And they’re not limited by place. These clusters, these communities of ideas, exist between places, outside places, but they’re real communities, or they’re starting to be, and if we can create the connections, they’ll be even more real. They’ll be larger, fuller, deeper. They won’t be limited to the elites. The way the world groups itself is changing. Give it Deep Connectedness, and it’ll change even faster. That’s what Fishbowll does. That’s what Fishbowll is for.’

  Chris was silent, watching him.

  ‘You don’t think this has the potential to be world-changingly important?’ Andrei frowned. ‘Maybe I’ve got this out of proportion. You know, for the last eight months it’s just been Fishbowll, Fishbowll, Fishbowll, morning, noon and night.’ He paused again. ‘Maybe I’ve lost perspective.’

  ‘No,’ said Chris. ‘I don’t think you have. It’s not socks. It’s so not socks. I was just testing you a little, Andrei. Probably for the first time in my life I’m looking at a start-up where the founder is telling me it’s going to change the world and I find myself thinking, he’s right. And that is not a small thing, dude.’ Chris smiled. ‘That is a fucking monster thing.’ He picked up his Coke glass. ‘To the fucking monster thing that is Fishbowll.’ He clinked Andrei’s glass and drank. ‘Two more questions. Thirty-two million users. What do you project by the end of the year?’

  ‘Seventy to eighty million.’

  ‘Growth projections are never right. They’re either too high or too low. Historically, over your eight months, where have you been? I’m guessing you’ve been too low.’

  Andrei nodded. ‘Back at the start of the year I wrote my projections on a napkin. Right here – right at that table over there. Ben still has it. Every month he brings it out. He tells me it’s nice to have some evidence that even Andrei Koss can be wrong.’

  Chris laughed.

  ‘But the year-end projection I’ve just given you takes that into account.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. You think it does, but it doesn’t. Not as far as infrastructure planning is concerned. Plan for a hundred, minimum. If you’re prudent, a hundred and twenty million. Do you have the infrastructure to serve that?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Will you have it? Andrei – and I speak from personal experience that I can tell you about some day, if you don’t mind me weeping into my beer – the thing that will kill you quicker than a coyote chasing down a roadrunner is if your server speed slows and if your site starts to go down. If Fishbowll gets a reputation for that, you may as well turn it upside down and empty the water out right now.’

  Andrei stared at him.

  ‘I’m serious. That’s where you need redundancy. If there’s one thing you should go do this afternoon after
we finish, it’s go find yourself more server capacity. Don’t sit down and code. Get on the phone and find yourself server space. Get your infrastructure ready. Now, the second question. Have you got any revenue?’

  ‘We’ve got a deal with 4Site.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘An advertising company.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘There’s one guy who’s cool. He’s kind of old but he gets it. The other guys I’ve met think they know it all.’

  ‘What kind of a deal have you got? This is confidential, I promise.’

  ‘They get eighteen per cent commission and guarantee one million revenue this year, double next year.’

  ‘That’s good. Is it exclusive?’

  Andrei nodded.

  ‘This deal runs for how long?’

  ‘Eighteen months.’

  ‘You’ll have outgrown them by then.’

  ‘I know,’ said Andrei. ‘But I thought we’d need that long to figure out how the advertising model works. This isn’t about making as much money as we possibly can. If we have to have advertising, then it’s about using it, as far as we can, to enhance the user experience. My aim is to use the contract period to experiment with the approach. And we have a guaranteed income, which was important for us. We were running out of cash. We’d be dead now if we hadn’t done that deal.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s a bad deal,’ said Chris. ‘Eighteen per cent is about as low as I’ve ever heard. Who negotiated that?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘Don’t be. I was lucky. My father knew some oligarchs. He’s Russian. I’m Russian, too. I mean, I was born in Russia. I’m American now, of course.’

  Chris looked at him in confusion. ‘And the connection is …?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Are you talking about Russian oligarchs? Is there some kind of Russian mafia involvement here?’

  Andrei cracked a rare smile.

  ‘Because I’ve been involved with some unsavoury characters, but if that’s what we’re talking about, Andrei, I’m out of my league.’