Free No Way Back by Matthew Klein Page B

The kind of man who isn’t easily embarrassed. The kind of man who doesn’t know how ridiculous he appears to others. The kind of man who thinks that
he, above all other candidates, should be CEO. In other words: the Sales VP.
    As much as I’d like to cut Dom loose – to fire him right now, as he sits across the table from me, smiling with those bleached white teeth of his – such a move would be
impossible. With only seven weeks of cash left, we need to make sales.
Now
. Without Dom, we start from zero. I say gently, ‘I sympathize, Dom. I really do. Probably, you
should
be CEO of this company.’
    He smiles. He likes that idea.
    I continue. ‘Here’s the good news. I’m only temporary. If we can turn this thing around, then I can leave. Which means the CEO job will be open. And of course I’ll put in
a good word for anyone who helps me. That could be you.’
It could be
, I think,
but it’s pretty unlikely.
    I look at Dom, see if my words have had a soothing effect. Dom says, ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, Jim. What you’re saying is: If I help you turn around Tao, you’ll
help me get the CEO job.’ He adds, ‘When you leave.’
    Sales 101: Repeat the pitch, and encourage the customer to say it out loud, too. I play along. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, Dom. When I leave, I’ll help you get the
job.’
    He nods and smiles. ‘I like what I’m hearing.’
    ‘But here’s the problem. You want to be CEO? We need to have a company for you to be the CEO of. And that means we need to keep Tao Software alive. Which means we need to get cash in
the door.’
    ‘Which I’m working on.’
    ‘You don’t understand,’ I say. ‘More of the same ain’t gonna cut it.’ I lean over the table and lower my voice, as if sharing a great confidence.
‘We’re running out of cash, Dom. We have seven weeks left.’
    ‘Seven weeks?’ He raises an eyebrow. Normally, it’s not good policy to tell employees how dire the situation really is. Honesty is never, despite the old maxim, the best
policy. Honesty makes people look for new jobs. But Dom, I wager, isn’t going anywhere. Not if he has a shot at the top spot at Tao. He’ll stick around long enough to give it a try.
    ‘That is why,’ I say, ‘we need to sell something. This week.’
    Dom smiles, the way you smile at your pudgy nephew, when he says something cute. ‘Sell something this week? Sure. Why the hell not?’ He shrugs. ‘Except that we don’t have
a fucking product to sell, Jim. If those idiots in engineering would give me something, something that actually worked, maybe I could help you, but—’
    ‘We have a demo,’ I say. ‘I saw it yesterday. It works.’ I think about Randy’s warnings. I add quickly, ‘Most of the time, anyway. But we can sell
it.’
    ‘Aw, shit,’ Dom says.
    ‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ I say.
    ‘Five dangerous words from a CEO,’ he mutters.
    ‘We’re selling to the wrong people. We’re selling the wrong product.’
    ‘Oh, OK,’ Dom says agreeably. ‘Let’s just build a new product, you and me. We won’t tell any of the Computer Science PhDs who work here until we’re all
done.’
    ‘Think about it. We’re trying to make money by selling software to teenagers who use Facebook. They’re fifteen-year-old girls with braces and crushes. They get an allowance
from Mommy and Daddy. Is it any surprise we don’t have any revenue?’
    ‘That’s the business plan, Jim. We build technology, and we licence it to social networks. That’s always been our plan.’
    ‘Well it’s a crappy plan.’
    ‘You have a better one?’
    ‘I do. It came to me this morning.’
    ‘It came to you?’
    ‘You know what I did this morning, before I drove to work?’ I decide to leave out the part about the Egg McMuffin. Or the second Egg McMuffin. ‘I stopped by the bank. I took
out money.’ I pause. ‘The
bank
, Dom. The bank.’
    He looks confused.
    ‘You know the old Willie Sutton