The Last Network - Chapter 48
Blow Up
“Hello.”
“Paolo, it’s Rabbit.”
“Hey boss, what’s up?”
“You tell me.”
Paolo froze; a chill ran down his spine. It was the day after the Nigerian job. Paolo was in LA, but everyone thought he was up north. He’d been careful not to be seen, but Peared had two hundred employees and almost all of them knew who he was. Had he been spotted at LAX? Maybe checking into his hotel or out grabbing lunch? He was staying in Covina, far east of the office, but the freeways were never empty and eyes where everywhere.
“What’s bothering you, Rabbit?”
“The fucking numbers, Paolo. You know, your direct responsibility. I shouldn’t have to ask you what’s up, you should be coming to me. Our average revenue per user is in an ugly decline. Tell me why.”
“A couple things. It’s seasonal. Spending dies down after Christmas, so advertisers dial back. CPCs will pick up again soon. The other part are these new users. They’re less engaged. I’ve got the AI figuring out how to get our hooks into them.”
“You know Paolo, some people might buy that bullshit, but I don’t. You picked the path of least resistance. We got a bunch of poor people crammed ten to an apartment passing around gear that’s three generations old. No one wants to advertise to slums. Get off your ass and find us some better users.”
Rabbit only thought in one direction. Relationships boiled down to what can someone do for Rabbit, and why the fuck weren’t they doing more of it. If you were top of mind, you were in trouble. Paolo usually said nothing. It was better to take the abuse, let the man run out of steam, and tell him what he wanted to hear. More often than not, Rabbit would move on to the next target and forget all about you.
Paolo wasn’t in a shit-taking mood today.
“What am I using to find those users?” he asked Rabbit.
“Your fucking brain. You know that thing between your ears that used to be worth something.”
“One man can only do so much, Rabbit.”
“One man? There’re eighty of you up at NAM running an AI that’s supposed to be able to do the work of a thousand people.”
“It is doing that work.”
“Not very well.”
“I told you a month ago that we were tapped out. You remember that conversation? The one where I said this was going to happen? The one where I told you that unless the product got some new features we were going to level off? You remember that, don’t you? If not, here’s a refresher. After I told you the product was stale and leaving revenue on the table, I then told you that you needed to spend real money on marketing. Let Em do her job. Our AI is optimized for efficiency, not creativity. It takes the people who like our service and finds more people like it. What it cannot do is sell third tier shit to first class users. Do you remember that?”
“No.”
“Really? It was a forty-five minute conversation. I was pretty fucking passionate Rabbit. By the end I thought you understood. But we’ll try this again. We compete for attention. Peared works well for poor people because it’s free and it pulls them out of their miserable lives for an hour. You want rich people? You want those high-end users that advertisers pay for? Then give me a fucking product that can compete with Apple, BMW, and Netflix. Give me something that looks like it was designed next year, not three years ago.”
“We don’t have the money for that.”
“Really? That’s funny because I know what we bring in the front door. If you don’t have the money, then something stupid is going out the back. I know you think if you press hard enough, people will find a magical solution that doesn’t involve opening up your wallet. That’s not happening this time. We’ve squeezed everything we can from this platform. If you want better results, invest in the product and the presentation. I’m sick of carrying the load for the rest of you assholes.”
The phone went dead. Rabbit had hung up on him. Paolo shrugged and tossed it on his bed. If that asshole didn’t want to hear the truth, there was nothing Paolo could do about it.