Sophia of Silicon Valley

by Anna Yen

  “Sophia, you’re not going to drink, are you?” asked Dad.

  “No, I’m not drinking.” You are going to hell for lying to your parents again. “Why are you calling me?”

  “Are you coming home for dinner? It’s late and we want to hear about your day.”

  “My day was really good, Dad. Really good.”

  “Does that mean you didn’t get fired yet?” Dad asked, laughing.

  “Very funny. No, I think I’ll do really well at Sterling, Rich,” I responded.

  “Okay. So you’re not coming home for dinner?” I knew Dad was hoping I’d return for a healthy meal; he didn’t want to seem as though he was babying me, so he said, “You should take it easy, young lady. Why are you always going? You can’t seem to sit still.”

  “I’m going to just eat here. I’ll be home in an hour or so, okay?”

  Before he hung up, my mom leaned in to the speakerphone so close that I could visualize her practically touching her lips to the phone base. Technology still baffled her and she was always worried people on the other end couldn’t hear her. She shouted slowly, “Come home soon, Sophia.”

  I rolled my eyes but yelled into the phone as I took slow steps back toward the bar, “Okay, Mom. I love you.”

  Days later, I walked into my office with a slight bounce in my step, wearing the new pink twinset Mom had bought me. To my surprise, someone was waiting—a cat-sweater-wearing short, round, elderly woman with gray hair and glasses. I thought I had walked into the wrong office, but immediately saw the framed photo of me and Kate on the left corner of my desk.

  “Oh, hello,” I said. “Are you looking for me?”

  I assumed the visitor was a Sterling, Rich employee; I hadn’t met anyone outside of Grant’s small group.

  “Are you Sophia?” the woman asked. When I nodded, wearing a blank look, she said, “I’m Penny Jenkins. I’m your voice coach.” Penny clearly enunciated every word, her dropped chin and lips forming facial shapes I’d never seen. I swear she somehow managed a star configuration in there.

  “Oh, you must have the wrong person. I don’t have a voice coach. Who are you looking for again?”

  “Sophia Young.”

  “Yes, that’s me. But I didn’t hire a voice coach.”

  “Grant did.” The woman continued to enunciate. “He said your voice is too high. It sounds too young. He’d like for us to work on it.” It was clear from her stern expression that this was not a joke. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Somehow, in just a few minutes, I found myself lying flat on the floor, learning how to “breathe from the diaphragm” and mi-mi-mi-mi my way into sounding professional. So far I just felt like I was an understudy in The Sound of Music. I had no idea what this had to do with law or IPOs, and wondered if it could be considered gender discrimination.

  But aren’t we past all that yet? That’s so eighties!

  “Your problem is,” Penny chided, “you speak from your vocal cords. That’s why you sound like you’re squeaking. Professional women don’t squeak, my dear.”

  “But . . . don’t all people talk from their vocal cords?”

  “No vocal cords for you!” Penny retorted. I felt as though I were back in elementary school being scolded by my piano teacher. Any minute now, she’d produce a ruler to slap my wrists.

  As Penny guided me through my “exercises,” she explained that male brains aren’t designed to listen to female voices. “It’s a fact,” she said. “Women have natural melodies in their voices that men can’t process, and if you’re going to be a successful woman in this valley, you’re going to have to avoid the tones they can’t make out.”

  “Stupid men,” I grumbled. “How long will we be doing this?”

  “If you practice, we should have this fixed in a few weeks. Now inhale, and . . .”

  You’ve got to be joking.

  “An hour a week?” I asked.

  “Every day, honey. Your sound frequencies are particularly high, so we have a lot of work to do.” Apparently my voice needed to come from my abdomen. I just hoped my abdomen was hiding a special reserve of professionalism that I didn’t know about yet.

  One hour later, Penny left my office as I rose from the floor feeling well rested. All the “breathe in, and out . . . hold . . . and in, and out” had relaxed me. But when I had a moment to process what I’d just been subjected to, I became angry that Grant didn’t give me advance notice about Penny, and also a bit sad that I didn’t get through my first month without him finding a flaw. I marched down the hall and stormed into his office. But I was immediately disarmed when I found him slumped over a document with his face only about three inches above the desk. His tongue was peeking out of the corner of his mouth again while his Montblanc pencil mercilessly marked up the page; his childlike appearance thawed me just before I rapped on the door lightly.

  “Hi, do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “So I met Penny Jenkins.”

  “Who is Penny Jenkins?”

  “The voice coach.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that was her name. The paralegal coordinator found her for me.”

  “What’s wrong with my voice?” I squeaked.

  “Well, I figure if at some point you really do call someone ‘Pig Fucker,’ you’d better sound older than five.”

  “Oh.” I took a deep breath as my mind searched for fighting words. “Well, do you do this for men so they can sound more . . . manly?”

  Grant narrowed his eyes and grinned suspiciously. “I do not have any knowledge of any man taking voice lessons for this particular reason. And, if a man working for me sounded like you do, Penny whatever-her-name-is would have been in his office as well. The voice lessons weren’t a knock against feminism or anything. Don’t take it so personally. I know a lot of other women have taken voice and presentation lessons, if that makes you feel any better.”

  My shoulders relaxed as I exhaled. Fair enough. “Okay, well, I would very much have appreciated it if you’d just given me a heads-up. I was really caught off guard.”

  “My bad. Sorry,” Grant said.

  Wow, he apologizes.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I smiled.

  “Since you’re here, we’re having an organizational meeting next week to kick off the Chaussure IPO. Want to join?”

  “What’s an organizational meeting?”

  “It’s a meeting that includes management, underwriters or bankers, both sides’ counsel, and auditors. Real fun. The company will give the bankers an overview of their business and then we’ll talk about the IPO’s structure, timing, who does what.”

  I’d lost interest two seconds ago, but willed my eyes to focus on Grant and pay attention so I could learn.

  “Plan to be there at least half the day, if not all day,” Grant said.

  Will there be lunch? My blood sugar needs lunch.

  “They’re in Seattle, right?” I made a mental note to bring juice boxes and granola bars from the stash I had inside my desk drawer.

  “They are a Seattle-based company, but their executives are close by in the South San Francisco Baylands. They thought it was important to have a presence here in Silicon Valley.”

  I nodded. As my toothless grandmother used to say, “There’s always some asshole who wants to move to California.”

  Chaussure promised consumers online access to the world’s largest selection of shoes. All shoes, all sizes, anytime. Despite all its skeptics, the company had enjoyed skyrocketing growth due to its flawless execution and Nordstrom-like customer service. Chaussure’s public promise was to guarantee even the most obscure footwear items at the lowest prices. I loved shoes as much as any woman, but I couldn’t help but reflect that Chaussure’s goal sounded more evil than good. They wanted to do away with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, crushing every mom-and-pop along the way. In my mind, they’d never succeed. Too many people loved to browse shoe departments, and who was going to buy a pai
r they couldn’t see, feel, and actually try on? How could browsing online compare with holding a four-hundred-dollar Sergio Rossi stiletto and dreaming of one day owning a pair? This company is going to be a dud.

  Grant walked toward the entrance of the Chaussure office at a pace that I couldn’t keep up with, no matter how fast I tried to move my Nine West–clad feet.

  “Just a heads-up, it is not a love fest between the bankers and the executive team,” Grant said.

  “Why did they hire them, then?”

  “One of the board members had a pre-existing relationship,” Grant answered while he continued racing ahead. “That’s how things work in Silicon Valley—they may not be the right person for the job, but if there’s a pre-existing relationship . . . well, oh boy, then they’re the right person after all,” he said sarcastically.

  “So what’s wrong with them—the bankers?”

  “The firm itself sucks, but regardless, it’s not uncommon for executives to dislike their investment bankers, because of the huge fees they charge and all the nosing around that they do. Tony Sine is the lead banker on Chaussure, and he’s actually quite good.”

  As we walked through the entrance of the building, Grant continued, “You should also know that the CFO, Aidan, has a thick accent. He’s Irish, as in from the city of Cork where the accent is extremely unusual. I’m only now beginning to understand what the fuck he’s saying. And he likes to mess with Tony, so he pours it on extra thick and speaks really fast when he’s asking questions.”

  Laughing, I said, “Okay. I’ll do the same to you with my new Penny Jenkins voice when you’re annoying me.”

  A chuckle from Grant. “Well played.”

  I was surprised to find that there was no real lobby but rather just a ramp leading to the black metal door of an elevator. Honestly, I was unimpressed—this dump was a far cry from the polished settings of Sterling, Rich. I questioned how well Chaussure was really doing. While looking around the empty nothingness of the poorly lit room with its concrete walls, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something metallic that was moving around at the end of the ramp, over by the elevator. It stood there as if waiting. When we approached it, lights turned on, and the robot said, “Hi. I’m Rosie. What is your—”

  I reached out to touch it, but Rosie rolled swiftly back a few inches, just out of my reach, without pausing her sentence. A self-security thing?

  “—name and who are you here to see?” the robot finished. This was the coolest thing I had ever seen! After Grant gave his name, Rosie asked, “Is Sophia here with you?” Both of us were asked to provide our thumbprints on Rosie’s screen, which served not only as an ID but also as an automatic signature to Chaussure’s confidentiality agreement. Scratch the whole “dump” thing. Now I was impressed.

  “I want to work here,” I whispered to myself. But unfortunately, Grant heard me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I was saying, ‘Who’d want to work here?’”

  Smooth move, Sophia.

  Rosie asked us to step into the elevator, then bid us adieu as the doors slid shut. When they opened again at the building’s top floor, I got my first-ever glimpse of what a startup really was. Dozens and dozens of twenty-year-olds in hoodies buzzed about on scooters and bikes in organized chaos. There were dogs playing freely, and a Ping-Pong table took up an entire corner of the space; it was surrounded by colorful beanbag chairs where employees lounged with their laptops propped on their thighs. Amid the futuristic scene sat some surprisingly sloppy-looking employee desks, two-by-four plywood planks precariously balanced on top of two black file cabinets, ironically matched with pricey Aeron chairs. A feeling of excitement brewed inside me as I watched the wrestling dogs, saw the relaxed and happy faces of the employees, and felt the sense that there was a deep camaraderie within these walls. Welcome to the startup world.

  We weren’t alone. A guy with thick glasses, black Reebok sneakers, and pants that were slightly too short for him waited outside the elevator, ready to lead us to a steel-framed concrete conference room that sat squarely in the middle of the open floor plan. The concrete cube’s small windows had shades drawn over them, and I could hear employees nearby whispering to each other, wondering what was going on inside “the cube.”

  Lucky me: I was about to find out.

  The conference room contained a group of twenty white guys with expensive shoes and sport coats, perusing what appeared to be a Wall Street Journal article. When they were finished, one of the guys slid the paper onto the table. I could just make out a pencil sketch of Eric McCabe, the CEO of Chaussure. Beneath his face blazed the headline chaussure.com’s growth continues to defy. What was going on in here? I quickly scanned the room. The air was tense, every white guy completely alert.

  Tony Sine, the lead banker and a dead ringer for Clark Kent, rose to speak as Chaussure’s CEO paced back and forth with his arms crossed, shaking his head. Tony seemed to be trying really hard to look intense and angry, but I thought he just looked like he was trying to go to the bathroom. Eric’s big ears were red and he had this silly grin on his face that he couldn’t seem to get rid of. He looked like someone I might have hung out with at Santa Clara: too cute and too young for me to take seriously. He also seemed to be just a bit too full of himself.

  “Look, we’re supportive that you’re trying to increase Chaussure’s brand awareness,” Tony the banker said. “God knows I’m the one always toeing the line, but even I can see why this article would be a problem for the SEC.”

  Eric stopped his pacing. “Grant said any PR that was in the ‘normal course of business’ would be fine with the SEC. This is the normal course of business, right?”

  No one had noticed we’d arrived, so Grant chimed in. “Hey, let’s not misquote me, now. Normal course of business is a television ad highlighting your shoes and fabulous service—not a front-page article in the leading financial journal with your comments about Chaussure’s hypergrowth. The SEC will likely view this as trying to create public interest for your upcoming IPO. It could mean a holding period—a delay—before you go public.”

  “Well.” Eric sounded disgusted. Maybe the conversation was over. I prepared my nice-to-meet-you face in case I was about to be introduced. But then he continued: “You’re only focusing on one thing! You’re completely missing the part where I talk about how great it is to work here. Look!” He pushed the Wall Street Journal article toward Grant, pointing to a dense spot in the middle. “‘Every day working here is like being in Paris.’” Satisfied, he looked up at the group. No one was responding. I tried desperately not to roll my eyes and laugh.

  I slipped out of the room—not because I wasn’t enjoying the Silicon Valley drama but because I had to go to the bathroom. Bad. As I passed the elevator bank, I saw Eric McCabe coming my way. I stopped.

  “What do you think?” he asked me. “Are they right?” He didn’t even know who I was—only that I’d come in with Grant Vicker. I’m sure he assumed I was an attorney.

  “Are they right about what?”

  “Is the Journal article bad? I mean, how could that be seen as bad?”

  “Well, I’m not a lawyer,” I started slowly, “so I won’t comment on how the SEC is going to react. Personally, though, I didn’t care for the Paris comment.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “God, no.”

  “Why not?”

  I turned 180 degrees, my arms stretched wide to indicate the hoodied young dudes, the ad hoc desk situation, the giant bowls of chips and Skittles. I asked, “Does this look like the Champs-Élysées?”

  To my relief, he burst out laughing. Safe passage to the restroom.

  When I returned, the meeting had begun with a mind-numbing discussion over logistics. I kept my eyes on Eric, who was leaning casually against a whiteboard, wearing the calm expression of a man whose confidence never falters.

  “Good morning,” he was saying now. “I’m going to let the team here do most o
f the talking, but I want to be clear about something. You’re about to be part of a company that is going to change the entire shopping paradigm.” Unlikely. “By applying technology to an archaic industry, we are forcing retailers to offer consumers the best selection and the most competitive prices.”

  Everyone around the table seemed to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. I leaned back in my chair. If you’d asked me, Eric was seriously overstating the importance of his company. Change the shopping paradigm, ha! After laying down a few house rules (we were never to omit the dot com from the end of Chaussure), Eric introduced Aidan, the company’s CFO.

  “Hiya,” he said, followed promptly by a load of gibberish that I couldn’t understand.

  My eyes opened wide. Was he speaking English? Because he sounded like two Chinese people trying to speak a horrible version of French. Aidan rolled words off his tongue faster than an auctioneer selling methamphetamines to a roomful of rich drug addicts.

  The lights dimmed and we turned our attention to rows of numbers projected onto the far wall. With a singsongy brogue, Aidan explained each line item on the income statement, moving his laser pointer from top to bottom quickly. My ears were on full alert, but I could catch only a word here and there.

  “Fahrty milloh . . .”

  “O’er der tirty-tree baklóige . . .”

  Tony interrupted. “Backlog? Did you say backlog? Why would there be backlog in your business?” He was frustrated and everyone could tell.

  “Dat yer a lath . . . big fecus . . . boat da tax . . . wallow on tirty-tree,” Aidan said, more quickly than before. This is what Grant had meant; Aidan was purposely pouring on his thick brogue to make Tony feel stupid.

  “What?” Tony asked.

  “Dat yer a la big fecus boat da tax wallow on tirty-tree,” Aidan said again, this time not breaking between words and definitely sounding like he was singing.