The Last Network - Chapter 14
Kendra Calling
They were at Rabbit’s house in Hancock Park. Ivy climbed the brick walls surrounding his yard. It was Paolo’s first time there. He could tell from the size of the trees and the thick roots on the shrubs that this was an old yard, maintained and loved for decades. They sat on his back patio. Dull stucco tiles mixed with brightly painted Spanish ones. A hummingbird darted through the late April flowers. The place was entirely out of character with the man he knew.
“Because you are wondering, this house had been in Diana’s family since the thirties. It was the only thing I didn’t want in the divorce.”
“It’s a lovely prize nonetheless.”
“I’d prefer the dog.”
Kendra walked over from the far edge of the yard. She picked up the pitcher of lemonade and poured herself an icy glass.
“So, you’ve cracked it?” Rabbit asked.
“You saw the video,” she said, stirring sugar into her glass.
“Yes, Evan and Suzy rob the Apple store.” Rabbit rolled his eyes. “I saw a player playing someone who wanted to be played.”
“What do you think the point of Peared is?” Paolo shot back.
“Let’s hear it Paolo. Rabbit, please let the man work. I’m not playing referee today.”
“We’ve been approaching Peared the wrong way. We’ve either built a game that’s an open-ended world, or we’ve built a tool and assumed its utility would be obvious. Grand Theft Auto or a telephone. Marketing is positioning it as a utility. Travel Together with Peared. Travel where? Travel for what? We’ve given people too much and they don’t know what to do with it.”
“You can do anything with it,” Rabbit said.
“And no one is doing anything with it,” Paolo continued. “Sometimes a product needs a narrower definition. Peared needs structure, guidance. What you saw with Evan and Suzy was an idealized version of that, but it’s also a blueprint. We need to retool the entire experience as a game.”
“That’s going to cost me money,” Rabbit grumbled.
“It’s already cost us money,” Kendra shot back.
“What are you proposing?” Rabbit asked.
“Mission, match, push. Just like I told you in my email. For the mission, I want to start with scavenger hunts. We define the goal. We award the prizes. I need data, so I need to test. I need a friendly construct in which to do it. I’m running a massive social experiment to figure out how to get people to manipulate each other in an open world. I can’t be matching people, throwing out hints, and pushing them with psychological tricks without a good cover story. Once we understand how to pair people up and how to push them when momentum stalls out, we’ll let people create their own missions. Start as a game and go back to a utility later,” Paolo said.
“What do you need from us?” Rabbit asked.
“I need Sonny to build us a mission engine. I need a prize pool. We can program the missions at NAM. The match engine is all us. We’ll have to dust off some of our dating site algos and start buying third party data on our users. I need to teach our AI how to do what Evan did. The match is the most important part of this. We need to put compatible alphas with betas. That’s not as simple as you think. People are complex objects. Brains and brawn. Doers and thinkers. Voyeurs and exhibitionists. It will take time to program that.”
“The push will be tricky,” Paolo continued. “I don’t know how much we’ll need it, and I’m not sure how to employ it, but we’ll need those glamour effects to dazzle people over the edge. Testing will tell us what is right.”
“Thanks Paolo. I never doubted you. Rabbit, we need to talk money here. My people are pulling a lot more weight than we intended. NAM’s job was to take a working engine, make it brutally efficient, and wring as many miles out of it as possible. You didn’t give us a working engine, but we have the fixes you need. The way I see it, we hold your future in our hands,” Kendra said.
Rabbit looked across the table at Kendra. She sipped her lemonade, her sandal tapping away on the tile. Kendra and Paolo had been running a two-man game on him. He wasn’t surprised; in fact, he was prepared. What he couldn’t figure out was if they were shaking him down or just worried about dead money. Rabbit paid NAM a percentage of all the revenue it earned. Peared had been live for a couple months and made a measly $20k. NAM’s split would barely cover a week’s worth of employee lunches.
“How much money have you put into Peared so far?” Rabbit asked.
“Close to $2 million. Double what I expected.” Kendra answered.
“That’s a big number, but not huge for a company like yours.”
“True, but products usually show a pulse by now. All yours has done is sucked money out my pockets.”
While Kendra and Paolo were clearly talented, making Peared go was still a roll of the dice. He figured they would need to go in another $2 to $3 million before this turned around or they decided to cut bait. If Paolo was wrong about this mission, match, and push approach, he needed Kendra to stick with Peared. He couldn’t have them walk away.
The right play here was making them whole. They needed to be less worried about money spent and more worried about future earnings.
“What do you want, Kendra? I’m not negotiating against myself here.”
“We are doing more work, we should get a bigger cut. Bump rev share up to 40%.”
Rabbit nearly spit his lemonade out. Asking to go from 30 to 40% was ludicrous. He had his own expenses to cover. Agreeing to that would kill his future profits.
“Kendra, if I give you 40% then I won’t make a dime on Peared. Be reasonable.”
“What do you think is reasonable?”
“Well, you put more work in than you bargained for, but once you get that engine humming you go back to business as usual. Your costs drop, the machines take on more of the job, margins increase. Don’t get greedy here. You say you’ve put in twice as much money as you expected. Let me cover that.”
“My ask was a 40% rev share and you are offering me a million? You understand the difference there? Going to 40% will be worth a million plus a month once we get this to scale.”
“It’s also a deal breaker, Kendra. Your complaint is that getting Peared going cost more than you expected. I’m offering to make you whole. Don’t shake me down. I don’t think you want us leaving, then word getting out why.”
“Make me whole now and you cover any cost overruns until we are back on budget.”
“Send me the budget, let me look at it, and as long as the numbers are reasonable, I can do that. Do we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
Rabbit had sat across the table from Kendra many times. He had never experienced anything like that before. Sure, early estimates were sometimes off, and deals needed to be tweaked, but that was an ill-considered cash grab. It was out of character for her. She must be under more pressure than he thought. At least she came to her senses.
He didn’t like the idea of paying a couple million out of pocket, but there was no fucking way he was going to give up future earnings. Paolo had cracked the code, and they were going to break through soon. Once everyone started earning, this would all smooth over.
Money is a great deodorant.