by Daniel Lyons
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Someone’s making a bet against us,” he says. “A big bet. And it looks like they’re trying to cover it up so we won’t notice it. The key is in the number of shares that get traded every day. That number for us has gone up by a huge amount all of a sudden, for no apparent reason. At the same time the number of shares sold short has gone way up too. It’s weird. I’m not sure if they’re connected. But they might be.”
He looks at me.
“Do you understand this?”
“Do I look like I understand this? I have no idea why you’re even telling me this. Do you realize in the time we’ve spent having this conversation I could have developed a new feature for the next iPod? Too late, though, because now it’s gone. The idea has flown away. Are you happy now?”
“The thing you should be aware of,” he says, “is what might happen next. The short sellers are betting that the stock is going to go down. If, instead, it goes up, they get killed. They lose money.”
“I know what short-selling is.”
“So okay. You get a bunch of these asshole shorts piling into your stock, they tend to get impatient for the stock to go down. So they tend to start spreading rumors to knock the price down. You might want to tell the PR guys to be ready for it.”
“That’s it? That’s why you’re here taking up my time? So you can tell me that I should tell the PR guys that someone might start spreading rumors?”
“It’s my job to keep the CEO informed. As the CFO, I have a fiduciary responsibility—”
“Okay, spare me. Now I’ve got a better idea. You go tell the PR guys about this, and let me get back to being creative. You also might want to find out who’s actually behind all the short selling. Have you thought of that?”
“Probably some hedge fund. I’ve put out some calls. So far
nobody knows. Kind of weird. I’ll stay on it.”
So Bono is in town, because now in addition to being a rock star he’s also got this investment company with a bunch of Silicon Valley private equity scumbags, who are even worse than venture capitalists, if that’s actually possible. They’ve told him they’ll double his money in five years, which in Valley speak means they are going to fleece him for every penny he’s stupid enough to give them. So far he’s forked over twenty million. I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth. He’s having so much fun.
Plus it’s hilarious to hear him talk about deals as if he actually knows something about technology. Like one time we were talking and he said something about “speeds and feeds,” and I asked him, “Excuse me, but did you say ‘speeds and feeds’? Do you even know what that means?” Of course he had no idea. But you know what? He’s no worse than all the other bozos who come out here with their MBAs and no background in tech and after six months they’ve picked up the lingo and suddenly they’re believing they’re going to spot the next Google and get rich.
Thing is, I should hate Bono, if only because he stole my shtick—false modesty and lots of noise about wanting to make the world a better place—and took it to a whole new level. Now he’s a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize, while I’m getting savaged by the European Union for being some big ugly American cultural imperialist shitbag capitalist. But give Bono credit. He figured something out that I didn’t. One word: Africa. The place is like a miracle worker shrine, a whole continent filled with absolution. Touch it, and you’re healed. No matter who you are, no matter how greedy or rotten, if you invoke the cause of helping Africans you get a free pass on everything else. Sure, Bono didn’t think this up himself. He stole it from Princess Diana. Now Bill Gates has jumped on the Africa bandwagon too. And Madonna.
But whatever. I like Bono. He’s the only person I know who’s more self-absorbed than I am. Which, when you’re not feeling good about your life, can be a really great thing. With Bono you can hang out all night and never once get to talk about your problems. You just listen to Bono blather on about AIDS and Africa and poverty and debt relief and how The Edge still can’t tune his friggin guitar by ear, even after all these years, and he still needs to use one of those electronic tuners instead. Oh, believe me, Bono is the black hole of Calcutta when it comes to conversation. A real barrel of laughs. If you ever start thinking your life sucks, spend some time listening to Bono and his sob stories.
So we started out in this bar in Palo Alto, and he gets hammered, of course. Next thing I know he’s sobbing. Says he’s seen this stupid Al Gore movie about global warming and he’s freaking out.
“Oh, Steve,” he says, “you should see the poor polar bears. Drownin! We gotta do sumfin, like have a concert or whatever.”
So I tell him, hey, first of all, a real polar bear would bite your friggin head clean off and eat you alive. “They’re not exactly these cuddly little animal friends that Al Gore probably told you they are.”
Second, I told him, “You know, not to sound condescending or whatever, because definitely I’d like to go plan a little charity concert with you, but I’m pretty busy these days, because in case you haven’t been reading the papers lately, the feds are trying to put me in jail. Meanwhile I’m trying to develop a new phone, and a new TV device, and I’m working on a presentation for our big developers conference which is only a month away, and I’m also putting the finishing touches on a new video iPod that holds four and a half hours of full motion video, which means one day soon we are going to wake up in a world where you can carry two full-length movies in your pocket. Think about that. Boom. Game over.”
Mr. Bono the Rock Star says, “Jaysus! Another fookin iPod? You’re like Willy fookin Wonka in his fookin chocolate factory, out there baking up your fookin iPods, and meanwhile the fookin planet is fookin meltin, ya fooktard.”
I tell him, “Bono, look, we all gotta do what we do, right? You wouldn’t call up Picasso and ask him to stop painting so he could work on global warming, would you? You wouldn’t call up Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela and say, ‘Hey, put aside that human rights stuff and come save some penguins on the Greenland ice cap,’ right?”
Bono says there are no penguins on the Greenland ice cap, they’re all down on the South Pole or whatever, like he’s Mr. Ecology Expert now that he snoozed through some movie. As far as I know the guy didn’t even finish high school. Then he starts calling me an eejit and telling me I should be putting all of Apple’s profits into some fund to save the planet.
I do what I always do when I want to drive someone nuts: I go Zen on him. I get all calm, and I say, “Riiiight, grasshopper, let me run that one past the board of directors. Give away all of our profits. We’ll put that on the top of the agenda for our next meeting.” Then I go, “Hey man, I’m going into a tunnel, man, oh shit, can you hear me? Zzzzzzh. Zzzzzzzzh.”
Apparently he’s not as drunk as I thought because he says, “Cocknose, I’m sitting right here next to you at a table, remember? We’re not even on a fookin phone.”
“Oh, what? Mmmmm . . . can’t hear . . . zzzhhhzzhh . . . what? You there? Can you hear me? Zhhhzhhh . . . Hey I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Seriously, Steve.”
“Seriously, Bono. Look, I’m telling you this ’cause I’m your friend. You need to get a grip, dude.”
So we pay our tab—let me clarify; I pay our tab, because in case you didn’t know this, Bono is probably the cheapest person in the entire world, and he never carries money, saying it’s because Jesus never carried money, but really it’s so he never has to pay for anything—and we drive up to the city. Bono insists he’s okay to drive, and maybe it’s an Irish thing or something because, even though he could barely walk out to the car, once he’s behind the wheel he’s fine, even when I’m passing him a joint and he needs to take his eyes off the road for a second to grab it.
We spend way too much money on dinner at some incredibly overpriced restaurant where the waiters cop all sorts of huge ’tude when I order raw vegetables and insist on having the vegetabl
es presented to me before they’re prepared and served. During dinner I try to tell Bono about the trouble I’m in with the SEC, but he won’t even pay attention.
“Come on,” he says, “let’s go hit the Mitchell Brothers.” He goes there every time he’s in town and runs straight to the room where you sit in the dark on couches and everybody gets a flashlight and you watch some chick diddle herself and all around the room you can hear losers whacking off in the dark. Last time I had to throw out my shoes afterward, because I’d stepped in so much man gravy (and no, not my own, but thanks for asking, a-hole). But Bono loves it. For years I’ve played along with him on this, but this time I tell him, “Buddy, please, let’s take a rain check.”
So here’s the thing. We’re driving down Route 280 in the rainstorm and this guy in a big Lexus sedan swerves as he’s changing lanes, and almost hits us. Bono has this total Irish temper, plus he’s shitfaced, and so he starts screaming and says, “Fook this, boyo, I’m gonna stick this fooking Aston Martin up this fooker’s arse!” He floors it. In a nanosecond we’re right on this guy’s rear bumper with our high beams on. Then, I can’t believe it, but Bono hits the guy.
Just a tap, the first time, but we’re going about eighty and the Lexus starts fishtailing on the wet highway. The guy in the Lexus is freaking out, waving his arms. Bono cackles and he says, “How’s dat fer a little taste of death, eh?” Then he pegs it and hits the guy again, harder this time, and then again, really hard, and the back of the Lexus crumples up like a tin can.
We all pull over. The guy gets out, and he’s got blood coming out of his eye sockets he’s so pissed. Then we open our doors and he sees who we are. It takes him a few seconds to register it. Then he’s like, “Wait a minute, aren’t you—and aren’t you—”
We’re standing there, like, “Uh huh, yup, that’s right, and don’t you feel like the world’s biggest turd right now?” He says, “Dude, you guys scared the shit out of me! Oh, man! Ha! You guys are awesome! I’m soooo sorry about getting in your way, I mean seriously, if I’d known, you know, who you were or whatever.”
Bono says, “Well, tink about dat next toim yer cuttin’ off some bloke and you don’t know who it is, right? Could be Jaysus. Or Boutros Boutros-Ghali or sumfin.”
The guy gives him this look, like “Boutros who? Bootsie Collins? Huh?” And he says, “Seriously, I just want to say, I’m totally sorry about this.”
Here’s how classy Bono is. He goes over and shakes the guy’s hand, the rocker handshake with the thumbs up, and he says, “Hey man, it’s kewl, ya know? Seriously, apology accepted.” Then Bono says, “Here, take this,” and hands this guy his own personal iPod, the U2 model, in black. “You keep it,” he says.
The guy looks at it for a second and he’s like, “No friggin way.” Like he just got a Cadillac from Elvis or something.
This is why I love Bono. Because down deep this is who Bono really is. This is the private Bono, the person the public doesn’t get to see. He takes a moment that could turn ugly and he makes it into something really beautiful. That’s just how his processor is wired, you know?
Bono, you are a class act. Totally.
So I’m getting huge blowback from the engineering department for firing Mike Dinsmore and his wise-ass helper Jeff. Apparently the engineers are all very devoted to the big carrot-top freak and they want him back. They’ve even signed a petition. But you know what? Frig that. I like firing people. I find it invigorating.
Whenever I’m feeling down, or low, or when I can’t break through some negative energy and get back into a creative groove, one of the first things I’ll do is fire someone. Naturally I try to be creative about it. One example is a game Lars Aki and I have created called Sniper. We do it when we need something to spark some creativity. Sniper is like a video game, only in meat space. Gist is, I’m John Allen Muhammad and Lars is my sidekick, Lee Malvo, and we go around looking for a victim. We make up some random rule. For example, the first person we meet with red hair gets fired. Or the first person wearing one of those stupid Bluetooth earpieces.
Today we’re stuck trying to create some design ideas for the next-generation iMac computers, and so we head out onto the campus, with the rule for the day being that the first person who dares to speak to me without being spoken to—bam. In the neck. We start out in the headquarters building, then cross through the cafeteria and the iGym, past the climbing wall and the aquarium and the Zen center, then outside to the skateboard halfpipe and the mountain bike trails and the rifle range, back into the wellness center, past the smoothie bar, the transgendered support group meeting, the aromatherapy room and the massage center where a squadron of therapists are rolling out their massage chairs for the afternoon shift.
Nobody will talk to us. Finally we give up and head back to the headquarters, where Paul Doezen comes rushing up.
“I’ve been looking all over for you. Your assistant said he didn’t know where you were, and you didn’t have your cell phone.”
“Bam,” Lars Aki says, shooting an invisible rifle at Paul. “You dead, sucka. You gone.”
“Lars,” I say, “we can’t fire the CFO.”
“The rules are the rules, dude.”
“He’s the CFO.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Paul says.
“Nothing.”
Lars gives me this disgusted look. “Dude, I’m going windsurfing.”
“What is it,” I say to Paul as we ride up in the elevator.
“The shorts,” he says.
“Whose shorts?”
“The short sellers. I gave you the spreadsheet. Remember?”
“Vaguely. Not really. What about them?”
“Short interest has doubled again. I’ve got a lead on who’s doing it.”
He gives me this look like a dog that’s just fetched a stick and is waiting for praise. He’s practically wagging his tail. But as I’ve explained before: I never give praise. Ever.
We get to the top floor and head to my office. I sit down. He starts to do the same, but I tell him to remain standing.
“I don’t have time for a chat,” I say. “Just tell me what you know.”
“Company’s registered in the Cayman Islands. Here.”
He slides me a piece of paper. The name of the company is Ianus.
“Please tell me that’s not some kind of joke about an anus,” I say.
“Yah-nus,” he says. “The Roman god. Also called Janus. It’s where the word ‘January’ comes from.”
“I knew that. But thanks for the history lesson. Who’s behind it?”
“Hard to say. There’s cut-outs inside of cut-outs, companies in the Caymans connected to companies in the Isle of Man. Shell companies, post office boxes, phone numbers that don’t work anymore.”
“Meaning?”
He shrugs. “Meaning we have no idea. Whoever’s behind this knows what they’re doing.”
“Maybe it doesn’t even matter. Who cares, right? Does it matter?”
“Your stock is your lifeblood. It’s your oxygen. Someone’s coming after it. I spent ten years on Wall Street. I know how these assholes operate. Someone is making war against you. We had some guys from Credit Suisse in the other day. They heard something about Microsoft trying to drive down the stock and buy the company on the cheap.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Hey, Microsoft needs an operating system. But it could be anybody. Hedge funds, private equity guys. Maybe they figure they can bang us down, buy us cheap and then flip us. Who knows? I’m going to send a couple guys down to the Caymans, see what they can turn up. I can get Moshe to help. He’s got some guys with intelligence backgrounds.”
“Not Moshe. Leave him out of it. And keep this quiet. Don’t use the company planes. Fly commercial. Pay cash for the tickets. Keep it off the expense sheets.”
He gives me a look. “You worried there’s someone inside?”
“Aren’t you?”
He doesn’t need to answ
er. Of course he is.
Short-sellers, leakers, competitors, U.S. Attorneys, SEC lawyers, in-house lawyers, conference organizers, beard colorists, couture consultants—all these distractions contribute to the random craziness that is always whirling around me and making it even more difficult for me to focus and concentrate on creating beautiful products. And now ever since we announced the SEC stuff we’ve been besieged by investment bankers and management consultants and every other kind of corporate advisory firm wanting to sell us some bullshit compliance services. It’s like we’ve been hit by a car crossing the street and every bloodsucking ambulance-chasing lawyer in the world sees us as a sales opportunity.
I know people imagine that I just wander in here and think big thoughts and boom, invent the next iPod. I wish. There’s way too much happening, way too many demands on my time.
Consider that after Paul leaves I find I’ve got four hundred and thirty two emails waiting for me, plus fifty-something while you were out notes. These are unique while you were out notes that I had created specially for me on handcrafted virgin pulp paper made from baobab trees in Madagascar. I spent a month looking at various kinds of paper pulp and then another month trying to pick the right shade of off-white and finally chose one called “Cotton Cloud” that is really pleasing to the eye.
The notes are arranged in order of importance. On top is a message from Steven Spielberg. Before I can even sit down and call him, my phone buzzes and it’s Ja’Red saying he’s got Spielberg’s assistant on the line. I tell him fine, let me know when Spielberg is on the line and then patch me in. He comes back and says Spielberg’s assistant wants me to get on the line first and then he’ll go get Spielberg. I tell him to hang up. They call back and say, again, that Spielberg wants me to get on the phone first and then they’ll patch him in. Again, I tell Ja’Red to hang up.
Finally, a few minutes later, Spielberg himself calls. He’s acting all cool, like nothing happened. Whatever. Fine. Play it that way. He’s also huffing and puffing and out of breath. He tells he’s calling me from his treadmill, and do I mind if he puts me on speaker so he can work out while we talk. I tell him no, I don’t mind, but let me put you on speaker too, and then I make a point of typing really loudly on my keyboard so he thinks I’m doing email instead of devoting my full attention to him. Honestly I hate all this dick-slapping that goes on in these calls but with the Hollywood guys it’s always like this. If you don’t play along they figure they can walk all over you.
