Begin talking about your business to any fellow entrepreneur and he is guaranteed to ask you one of the following questions: ‘How are you guys funded?’ or

‘How much money did you raise?’ or

‘Are you still looking for funding?’

These are our obsessions, like men comparing cars or penis size. And, just like with cars and cocks, there are two options when faced with one of these questions – either tell the truth or lie through your teeth.

Raising money is the thing that keeps dot com entrepreneurs awake at night. In an industry where it’s possible to sell your company for hundreds of millions of pounds despite not having ever made a penny of revenue, it’s critical to have a decent pot of money to spend while your business gets established sufficiently to secure proper venture capital funding. How you answer the funding question will absolutely shape how other entrepreneurs see you and your business – and can also be the kiss of death when speaking to potential investors. In a perverse catch-22, no investor wants to be the first, or only, person to invest in a company that hasn’t got any money.

After all, if your company is so hot, why on earth has no one else realised yet?((The only possible exception to this rule is if you’re running a site that has been raking in profits from day one, despite having absolutely no external investment. Something like The Million Dollar Homepage. It’s a piece of cake to raise money if you don’t need, or want, it. The parallels between casual sex and money could fill a book.))

The very first task for any new media mogul, then, is to raise some initial start-up money, either by raiding their savings or tapping up friends and family. This process is known – creatively enough – as a friends and family round, and tends only to work if you need a small amount of money – £50k, say – to buy computers and rent an office. In the case of Fridaycities, I’d spoken to my parents and my uncle and begged them for money. When they agreed, we had completed our friends and family round.

That was stage one. The easy part.

After the friends and family round comes your ‘angel’ round, which is where the fun really starts. An angel round is just like a friends and family round, but where your uncle or your parents are replaced by a private investor (often a successful entrepreneur with money burning a hole in their pocket) who gives you a wodge of cash (maybe a couple of hundred grand, rarely more) in return for shares in your company. As one of the earliest investors, they tend to take quite a large stake – sometimes as much as 25 per cent – for their money. If you’ve ever watched Dragons’ Den, you’ve seen an angel round.

Quite why these early investors feel the need to call themselves ‘angels’ is not entirely clear, but, frankly, if someone is giving you a couple of hundred grand, you’ll call them whatever they want you to. ‘Who’s your angel?”You are, you big, generous hunk of money, you.’

The major benefit of the angel round, apart from bringing in much-needed cash for luxuries like salaries and printer paper, is that it makes your company legitimate.

Now when a fellow entrepreneur or, more importantly, a venture capitalist, asks you the big funding question, you can answer honestly: we’ve secured angel funding from — —. If your Mr X happens to be a name they recognise – or, better yet, a drinking buddy of theirs – you’ve got instant credibility. It’s a pack game, and the theory goes that if you’ve managed to convince someone of the worth of your idea, then you must be on to something. Unless you’re talking to a potential investor – who will check your story before he commits to putting in any of his own money – you can lie about the amount. No one will believe you anyway. The point is that you’ve shown that someone believes in you.

Suddenly, with an angel investor or two in the bag and enough money to get your business launched, doors start to creak open. Doors that lead to the third stage – the Holy Grail of funding – the venture capital round. Venture capitalists – the Saul Kleins and the Danny Rimers – are the big men of investment. They represent funds of many millions of pounds, and they’re the people you go to when you want to raise two million pounds in exchange for giving away a huge chunk of your company.

Unlike angels, they don’t just offer the benefit of their experience; they insist on giving it. When you have venture capital money, you are – and don’t you ever forget this – no longer your own boss. Oh, sure, they’ll let you keep your job title – CEO, founder, whatever – but they’ll take a seat (maybe two) on your board, and when the company ‘exits’ (that is, gets bought by Google, or floated on the stock exchange), they get their money back first. Any questions?

No?

There’s a good entrepreneur.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I still needed to find an angel.

7.1

Following my encounter with Angus Bankes at Adam Street a few months earlier, he and I had become good friends. Part of the reason he liked me, I suspected, was that he saw me as a curiosity: a journalist who drank, partied and managed to upset people, just like his former business partner, Nick Denton. In fact, several times he’d jokingly referred to me as ‘the British Nick Denton’ (Denton is British, but he now lives the life of a media mogul in New York). When I first told Angus about Fridaycities, he offered to try to hook me up a meeting with Denton in New York, in the vague hope that he might be of some commercial use, perhaps even as an investor. ‘I’m sure Nick will see you, ‘ he said, confidently.

Unfortunately, Nick had other ideas. Having now established himself as a permanent fixture on the New York media scene (he’s rumoured to count Michael Stipe among his personal friends, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit once sent him flowers), frankly he doesn’t need to waste time schmucking about with the likes of me. After a number of emails from me suggesting a meeting, he eventually palmed me off with a meeting with his business development manager. A clearer fuck off you will never get. But bless Angus for trying.

As I sat in our new of fice, stirring my coffee with a biro and drawing up my list of possible angel investors, one name kept coming back. If Angus was happy to introduce me to friends of his, people he trusted, surely that must mean he liked the idea. Why else would he risk the embarrassment?
It was worth a shot.

I picked up the phone. Angus was the first name in my phonebook. A good sign, I thought.

‘Angus, it’s Paul Carr.’

‘Oh, hello. Funny you should ring – I was just talking to someone in the office about Fridaycities.’

Another good sign.

‘Brilliant! All good, I hope. Actually, it was Fridaycities I wanted to talk to you about. Things are really starting to move here – we’ve got our new office in Battersea.’

‘Isn’t that where Michael Smith is?’

‘Yeah. He’s across the hall. I can smell his success from here.’

‘Ha! How’s the fundraising going?’

‘Good. Good. We’ve just closed our friends and family round. Actually, that’s why I was calling. I was wondering whether you might be interested in being – and this is just a thought – but whether you might be interested in coming on as our non-executive chairman?’

Coming straight out and asking Angus for investment would be madness, not to mention rude. And, also, that wasn’t what we wanted from him. Not when he could offer so much more as a non-executive director.

Ah yes, the non-executive director. A quick explanation of what I mean by that…

At the head of any limited (or public) company is the board of directors, responsible for driving the direction of the company. In a small business the board might consist of just the founder (usually called the managing director in the UK, or chief executive officer (CEO) in the US) and the company secretary, who is in charge of all the financial and legal crap. In a large business the board is often the size of a small army – bursting with people in expensive suits boasting job titles like Vice President of Corporate Responsibility and Senior Director of Job Title Invention. They are the people who represent the shareholders, and are responsible for the smooth running of the company. The bucks stop with them.

To make matters more confusing, board members can be either executive or non-executive. The former are usually actual employees of the business – they have a day-to-day job, actually running things. The latter are more akin to advisers. They come to the board meetings, sure, and they give input to the running of the show, but they probably don’t actually do anything for the company on a nine to five basis.

And yet, despite not being actual company employees, non-executive directors can be very useful indeed. Imagine you’re the owner of a company that makes frozen meals. You want to establish yourself as a class act, both to customers and to the business world. So you phone up your favourite celebrity chef. ‘Jamie, ‘ you say (Gordon… Gary… ), ‘how do you fancy joining our board as a non-executive director?’

‘What do I have to do?’ asks Jamie.

‘Nothing, ‘ say you. ‘Just come to the board meeting every month and tell us what you think. Oh, and maybe let us use your name in our annual report. And possibly think about endorsing what we make. We’ll pay you ten grand a month, and you can have five per cent of the company.’

‘Once a month?’

‘Yep.’

‘Pukka.’

Everyone’s a winner.

So, back to the phone call…

I reckoned Angus would make the perfect non-executive director for us. He had already made an effort – by contacting Nick Denton – to help us raise money, and having shares would only encourage him to do even more. God knows, he might even invest himself. But the biggest plus was his experience in raising money for Internet businesses that went on to sell for – say – $30 million. He’d been around long enough to know almost everyone in the Internet investment community, and for everyone to know him. With him at the table, we’d have instant credibility. And if I could convince him to go one step further – to become non-executive chairman (effectively, the head of the board) – then the business would look even better. In fact, it would be a Big Fucking Deal along the same lines as hiring Scott at The Friday Project. Most start-ups would kill to have Angus on their board, so I was under no illusions as to how tough a job I was going to have to convince him.

‘Well, I’m flattered.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I really like the business. Send me the business plan and an email with what you’re offering. But, yes, I’m definitely interested.’

And that was that. An email, a lunch and a couple of weeks later we had a non-executive chairman.

‘And I suppose I should start thinking if I know anyone who might put some money in.’

And with that, we had the beginnings of an angel round. Fridaycities was real. There was no turning back now.

Holy shit.

7.2

With Angus on board, and our legitimacy established (for a few weeks at least), it was time to get on with the serious business of raising cash.

The first weird thing about raising money for a start-up company is that it feels like you’re actually running two companies: the one that you’re raising money for, and a totally separate one that exists purely to raise money for the first. And, as a founder, it’s the second one that’s most important, the one that takes up most of your time. Because without that one, the other one has no money and no future.

In terms of the actual Fridaycities site, my role at first would be closer to that of architect than actual builder. Having had the big idea (a site that allows city dwellers to share information), mapped out how we’d achieve it (a monster of a Microsoft Word document, written over about three weeks that explained everything I thought the site should do) and, finally, found someone to build it (a particularly talented freelance programmer called Dan Webb), my main job was to manage the fundraising and to build partnerships with other companies that might be useful to us. The actual day-to-day running of the site was down to Savannah and Karl – Savannah managing the users, deciding what questions appeared on the site and deleting those she thought were just slightly too obscene, and Karl writing a daily editorial to encourage users to keep coming back to the site, day after day.

The second strange truth about raising money for a start-up new media company is how much of it is dependent on personal contacts. If you want to get a bank loan to start a fruit shop, there isn’t a bank in the world that will refuse to see you. You phone up your local branch, you tell them you want to start a business and need a loan, you draw up a business plan, you put on a suit and tie and you make an appointment. Possibly not in that order. The hard part comes after you get through the door and have to convince the twenty-five-year-old ’small business manager’ to agree to lend you five times his salary.

By contrast, in the world of angels and venture capitalists, the hard part is finding the door in the first place and getting through it. And that’s where our non-executive chairman would come in. Angus had agreed to make introductions to some investors he knew, including both potential angels and also some venture capitalists who specialised in early stage investment. But first he wanted to see our presentation: the PowerPoint slideshow I’d prepared, explaining the company to potential investors.

In the unlikely event that you ‘re unfamiliar with PowerPoint, it is basically Satan’s own office tool. For a former writer, there is almost nothing more horrific than having to boil down everything you want to say into a ten-page PowerPoint presentation. The way it sucks everything down to bullet points. The supremacy of style over substance. The fact that PowerPoint presentations All Look The Fucking Same. It’s utterly, utterly vile. But, as I discovered, it’s also absolutely essential. If you want to raise money, you are going to have to pretend to love PowerPoint. Investors expect, nay, demand, it.

Which is why it made perfect sense for Angus to want to see our presentation before he lined us up any meetings with possible investors.

There was just one slight problem.

We didn’t have a presentation.

I didn’t even know where to start. What even goes in these things? There was only one thing for it. I called Sam.

Twenty-four hours later, we were back in the Chandos and I was about to pick Sam’s brains again. I returned from the bar with two pints of Pure Brew, the pub’s premium house beer. It was the least I could do for the man who was, over the next hour or so, going to teach me everything I ever wanted to know about PowerPoint presentations. What Sam didn’t know about PowerPoint you could fit on to, well, a PowerPoint slide.
‘Okay, ‘ I said, flipping open the brand new Moleskine notebook

I ‘d bought specially for the occasion, ‘tell me everything.’ ‘First up, the secret of a good PowerPoint is K-I-S-S. Keep it simple, stupid. These people see dozens of these fucking things a week. The last thing they want to see is another one. So don’t just write down everything you want to say on the slides and then read them out. That’s the mark of an amateur.’

I was scribbling wildly, trying to write down everything he was saying. Sam grabbed the pen out of my hand.

‘Jesus. Look …’ He wrote right across two pages of the notepad…

‘Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.’

Touche.

‘Okay, do you have any good press quotes about Fridaycities you can use? They’re always handy.’

‘Um… yes, sort of, ‘ I replied. ‘We had a nice piece in the Guardian the other week. Just saying that the site was launching and that it looked interesting.’

‘Perfect. Did they say anything you can quote?’

‘They described us as “MySpace for adults”.’

Actually, what the Guardian had really said was that we were claiming to be ‘MySpace for adults’. The quote had come straight from our press release.

‘Perfect!’ said Sam. ‘Quote laundering is your friend! Stick that quote on your first slide. Nice and big.’

The lesson continued…

‘Your second slide needs to be an introduction of who you are and what you’ve done before.’

This was going to be a bit trickier as I was the only one of the three of us (it was too early to include Angus) who had ever run an Internet business before. Sure, Savannah had a law degree and had managed and edited a small alternative newspaper, and Karl was a great writer with lots of experience, but in terms of things that a VC would care about, we had a problem. Hell, even I was struggling with just The Friday Project under my belt. But on the other hand, we were writers, so we could quite easily tart ourselves up a bit. Instead of the plain old Friday Project, I could use the company’s proper corporate title, Friday Project Media Plc. That always sounds more impressive. Like in that old British Telecom ad, where Maureen Lipman plays the proud grandmother who decides that, even though her grandson failed everything except sociology, he was still a success. ‘You have an ology? You’re a scientist!’ I had a similar theory: you ran a PLC? You’re a fat cat!

Karl, meanwhile, thanks to a splash of artistic licence, became a critically acclaimed writer, courtesy of the four books he’d written (two that I’d commissioned him to write while at The Friday Project, one about the Internet that we’d co-written together, and a last one – Birth Marks and Love Bites, that, while strictly speaking a novel, hadn’t actually been published. But we could take a punt and say on the slide that ‘His novel, Birth Marks and Love Bites, will be published in 2008′. That seemed like a good enough bet. Who can say what will happen in 2008?

Savannah was the easiest polish of all – drag out the Penny newspaper stuff (Savannah was also editor of The Penny ’s spin-off website, Pennylondon.co.uk), big up the law degree and postgraduate degree and she was golden. Before we knew it, and thanks to the brevity of PowerPoints, we would all have ologies. Sam was impressed. ‘Perfect… you’re getting the hang of this.’ The next stage of the presentation, Sam explained, would be to outline what the site was and who was going use it. ‘How do I know who will use it? It’s for everyone, ‘ I said, like an idiot.

Sam was exasperated: ‘Jesus, you really are an idiot, aren’t you? The answer to that question is always twenty to thirty-five-year-old young professionals. It doesn’t matter whether your site sells incontinence pads by post, or offers downloadable colouring books. The audience – sear this into your brain – is twenty to thirty-five-year-old young professionals. In marketing speak these are members of the “ABC1″ socio-economic group. Your investors are going to be ABC1s. You are all ABC1s. Advertisers fucking love ABC1s.’

In fact, even advertisers who hate ABC1s and actually want to reach, say, DEFs (the old, the students, the unemployed and the dead) will still pack their adverts with ABC1s. Don’t believe me? Look at the adverts for those ‘all-purpose loans’ that bail out chavs who have spent their benefits on one too many PlayStation 3s. The ads that sit between Diagnosis Murder and The Jeremy Kyle Show in the schedules. Ever wondered why, instead of being skint peasants, the people in the adverts always seem to be middle class with nice houses and lovely soft furnishings? In other words, people who don’t actually need a fucking loan?

‘ABC1s?’

‘ABC fucking 1s. Everyone either is one, or aspires to be one, even if it means borrowing money they can’t afford to repay.’ Across the two notebook pages I wrote ‘ABC1s’ in huge letters. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘A little bit. Sorry.’

‘Right – the last things to think about are your revenue and investment requirements. This is where any last pretence of accuracy or honesty should be abandoned. The company doesn’t exist yet, it has no users, customers, readers, whatever – it is a totally imaginary beast. You might as well try to guess the height of your pet unicorn. In short, you can say what the hell you like about how much the company will make, and how much you will spend making it. As long as you can justify it through maths. And as long as you – and I can’t emphasise this enough – as long as you believe it. What’s your business model?’

I explained that Fridaycities aimed to make its money through what we called ‘premium services’. The vast majority of users could access and use the site for free – they could sign up, ask their question and get answers – all without spending a dime. But if they happened to find someone else on the site who they wanted to contact privately, then they had to get out their credit card. In the presentation, I was planning to show a hypothetical example of someone who was starting a book group in London who wanted to use private messages to invite other users to join. That person would surely be prepared to pay £12 ($25) a year for the ability to send private messages to other book lovers on the site.

‘Bollocks, ‘ said Sam. ‘Book groups? You know what anyone listening to you talk about private messages will actually hear?’ ‘No… ?’

‘Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.’

Sam was right. It’s a sad fact in the new media world that most people will only pay for two types of content… sex and gambling.

That’s it.

Think about it… Millions of people pay for porn online – sex.

Millions of people pay for subscriptions to dating sites – sex. Hundreds of thousands of people pay for subscriptions to financial information sites and share tips – gambling.

…but the rest is slightly more subtle…

Tens of thousands of people paid to subscribe to Friends Reunited, the site dedicated to bringing together old school friends. Why? Because they wonder what their best pal is doing now? No. Because they want to see if the kid who stole their lunch money is in jail yet? Uh-uh. People subscribed to Friends Reunited for one reason and one reason only… because they want to know if the pretty girl they kissed when they were twelve is now a pretty woman. And if she’s single. And, if so, then they want to contact them. Why? Sex. In fact, you could argue that even the gambling sites are really about sex. Why else does anyone want to get rich quick? Bluntly, if you want to raise money for a site that relies on people paying for premium services, you better hope that when you go through your presentation, investors hear this when you talk about revenue in your presentation…

‘Sex, sex, sex, sex.’

By giving users the ability to contact people who live in their city and send them private messages, you’d better believe that’s what they’d be hearing. And just in case that was too subtle, we had added an extra twist – one that I thought was maybe in the top three ideas I’ve ever come up with… The Quick Tick.

The Quick Tick was as simple as it was utterly brilliant. When you visited another member’s page on Fridaycities, you’d see a list of five tick boxes. Next to each one was a sentence…

This person makes me laugh [ ]

This person scares me [ ]

I like the cut of this person’s jib [ ]

I’ve met this person in real life [ ]

If you ticked one of those boxes on someone’s profile, the recipient of your tick would get an email saying that someone had ticked them. We would then add up all the ticks and show a leader board of the funniest, scariest (etc etc) users on the site. It was a quick and simple way for users to give each other a nudge, without going to the effort of writing a whole message. And if you’re not hearing ’sex, sex, sex, sex’ yet, it’s because I haven’t told you the final box.

I quite fancy this person [ ]

Boom. If you ticked that box on someone’s profile they would immediately get an email saying that someone – could be anyone, it’s anonymous – quite fancied them. But here’s the kicker: if they became a premium member (just £12/$25 a year) they could find out who ticked them.

Imagine you were registered on the site and got that email. Someone had looked at your profile and they quite fancied you (we spent days trying to get the exact wording right, to encourage casual ticking). Tell me, honestly, you would be able to resist paying £12 to find out who?

‘Sex, sex, sex, sex.’

Sam continued…

‘So, if you know where your money is coming from, we can start to make up some maths. Let’s start with users. You’re going to attract – let’s say – eight hundred thousand users in the first eighteen months.

‘Eight hundred thousand?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t that quite… a lot?’ ‘Nonsense. That’s very achievable. MySpace has over a hundred million users – eight hundred thousand is chickenfeed. Now, of those eight hundred thousand how many will pay for premium membership?’

He ran through some possibilities as I sat, silently making notes, amazed by how utterly believable Sam sounded as he zipped through the numbers, having a conversation entirely with himself…

Ten per cent? Too high.

Five per cent? Too round.

Four per cent? Perfect. Modest and scientific.

So, that’s 32, 000 users in eighteen months, paying £12 each. That’s £384, 000.

Except – and here’s the next rule – no one uses pounds. The web is international. And, despite the American economy’s best efforts to become worthless, the dollar is still the global currency. On the day we did the maths, the dollar was basically worth two to the pound.

‘$768, 000 revenue. Pretty damn respectable.

Impressive even.

Scientific.

Total bullshit.

But scientific.

You getting all this?’

‘Yep, ‘ I said, my hand aching as I tried to keep up.

‘Good. Right – last questions – how much money are you trying to raise?’

‘Well, to cover our costs for the first year we need…’ ‘Pfff…’ he cut me off with a wave of his hand. ‘Another classic beginner’s mistake. Don’t even start to work out how much money you actually need. Not since the beginning of time has anyone ever been able to successfully predict how much money they will spend setting up a new media company. How much do you want ?’ He had a point, again. Alex Tew set up The Million Dollar Homepage for, basically, nothing. Angus raised millions for Moreover and still, to this day, the company hasn’t spent it all. It was nearly impossible to work out the actual amount of money you’d spend setting up your business.

‘No, the only real question is how much can you get in return for the amount of the company you’re prepared to give away to the investor. Your angel round is probably going to be the most expensive money you’ll ever raise. You’ve got no business, no customers, no proof of anything and investors stand a damn good chance of losing their shirt. As a result they’ll want a big stake in the company, for as little money as they can get away with putting in. But at the same time, they’ll want to give you enough money to give you a fighting chance of success. So, the trick is to decide how much money you need to get you through to your next – bigger – round of funding.’

The mighty venture capitalist round.

We decided £300, 000 was a good amount, based on how much I knew we were spending and the fact that we were confident of finding a larger investor within six to eight months. But, of course, we would put in the presentation that we needed £500k. ‘Everyone negotiates, ‘ explained Sam. ‘The question is how much equity £300k will buy for your new – as yet entirely hypothetical – investor. And here’s when the biggest piece of bullshit of all crashes through the door. The valuation.’

‘How do you think we should value the company?’ I asked. ‘£1.2 million.’

‘£1.2 million? Based on what?’

‘Based on the fact that I’ve just said it. £1.2 million, post-money.’ There are two valuations, he explained, pre-money and post-money. In short, the pre-money valuation is the value of the company before an investor puts his money in. Our pre-money valuation would be £900, 000. The post-money valuation is the value of the company, once the investor’s money is in. So, if we were worth £900, 000 pre-money then after the £300, 000 was added to the pot, the post-money value of the company would be £1.2 million. There was method in this plucking-a-number-out-of-the-air madness. Putting £300,000 into a company that was worth £900,000 to start with would give the investor a third of the company pre-money, or a quarter of it post-money. Both well below the 51 per cent level which would give the investor control of the company, but, importantly, also low enough to ensure that we could raise even more money at a later date, and a higher valuation, without giving too much away in total. With six pages of notes, I had more than enough to get cracking on the presentation, but as it was already past ten and we’d had almost half a dozen pints each, it would have to wait until tomorrow. ‘Come on, let’s go to Adam Street, ‘ suggested Sam. ‘Apparently Daniel Bedingfield’s going to be there for some party or other.’ ‘Daniel Bedingfield? God, I hate that prick.’

‘Exactly, come on…’

7.3

Adam Street, 2.00 a.m. And while Beding field was a no-show, a couple of Sam’s business partners had turned up and we’d managed to get over our disappointment by getting wasted on Mojitos.

‘ So, ‘ I slurred to Sam, mixing together mint leaves and ice with my straw, ‘I forgot to ask you earlier; how’s the fundraising going for your new business?’

‘Yeah – great,’ he replied, even more drunk than me, thanks to the Pure Brews from earlier. ‘Actually we’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning with — [one of the hottest players in the London VC world, and renowned for being very, very serious].’

‘Tomorrow morning? You don’t mean this morning?’ ‘Yeah, in about…’ he checked his watch ‘…six hours.’ ‘Jesus, mate, ‘ I said. ‘You’re still going to be pissed in six hours.’ ‘Yeah – and we haven’t even finished our presentation yet. I’ve got to go home and do it. I think I’ll probably just stay up all night and go straight to the meeting.”

And this was the man I was relying on to make our presentation professional?

I drained the last of the rum from my Mojito and nodded at the waitress to bring me another.

7.4

The next afternoon, hung-over to crap, and hunched over my laptop trying to stop the room spinning long enough to make my PowerPoint slides, I couldn’t resist phoning Sam to see how his meeting had gone.

‘Great! We got the investment. Ten million.’

‘You are fucking kidding me!’

‘Of course I’m fucking kidding you. P- [his technical adviser who had been out with us as well] was still drunk in the bloody meeting. We told him before we went in that he wasn’t allowed to say anything, but he kept interrupting us even when I kicked him under the table. I nearly fell asleep and S- [their other partner] couldn’t remember any of the presentation. It was a fucking train wreck.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry, man.’

‘Nah, doesn’t matter. They were never going to invest. But by only arranging meetings with people who are never going to invest we can drink till four, do the presentation and not have to stress about whether we’ll get the money or not. We know we won’t anyway.’((And, sure enough, as I write these words – months later – they still haven’t got the money. But they’re having a fucking amazing time not getting it.))

His logic was impeccable, in a way. And he’d made enough from his previous venture not to have to care. And at least he was keeping his hand in and giving the illusion of progress.

There was some kind of twisted psychology to it.

And a twisted psychology is still an ology.

Chapter Eight: ‘All the best meetings are taken’…