The Last Network - Chapter 29
Toehold
Rabbit watched Guy and Girl Sam file into the conference room. The twins with the funny names. They were dressed nearly identically in the uniform of disappointing news. Navy slacks, white starched shirts, open jackets. The only difference between them was in their hair. She went pixie. He was short spiked.
He watched the unconscious coordination between the two. Bags on either side of the conference table. He to the left of the whiteboard, she to the right. They unzipped at the same time. MacBooks out and opened at the same time. She to the projector settings, he to clean the white board off.
Everything Kendra did had a reason to it. Sending them was no different. Their effortless unity was designed to unnerve and suffocate. They ran a game of possession, swallowing up as many opportunities to speak as possible, keeping the client’s wrong opinions at bay. Their unconscious twinness passed the baton back and forth between them until a dizzied customer tumbled into their arms.
They were here to tell him that his toehold in America was too small, that it had cost too much to achieve, and that it didn’t have a pathway forward. The first half of their presentation was an overview of spend and performance. Big numbers out, tiny trickles in. The second half would show deterioration overseas. They’d lean in, emphasizing that Peared was slowing, and that bullet production was killing the business.
He didn’t need the Sams to tell him he’d wasted $20 million dollars, and he wasn’t about to let them run their parlor trick on him.
Rabbit could change tactics with the best of them. Now he needed to see if these two weirdos were amongst the best, or if they were just here to deliver a message. He walked into the conference room, unplugged the projector, and then sat down at the far end of the table.
“I saw the presentation. I don’t need it spoon fed to me.”
“You could have cancelled or setup a call then. We flew down for this,” Girl Sam said.
“No, you flew down for this. I want to know how to salvage that $20 million I just spent.”
“The numbers are the numbers,” Guy Sam said.
“But the perception is something different. If I can’t win America, then I want to make sure no one wins America. I want to poison the pool,” Rabbit replied.
“Interesting.”
Girl Sam looked over at Guy. Rabbit got up and poured waters for everyone. He had changed the gravity in the room. Better to give them a moment to recalibrate. He didn’t know how the twin telepathy worked, but there was no reason to rush now.
“What’s the ultimate goal?” they asked.
“I win. The others shutdown.”
“That’s fairly broad,” Guy said.
“It’s very concrete. I want them to think America is the market to own. I want them to ignore everywhere else. I want to make America unwinnable. By the time they realize the mistake, it will be too late.”
At this point he watched the Sams detach. Guy Sam grabbed a pen and paper and Girl Sam took over the conversation.
“We are two months from the launch of Together and Rizon. You’ve invested $20 million in this market and got 500k customers out of it. Outside the US, Peared signs up almost a million people a day and doesn’t spend a dime. The first thing we need to do is talk up the importance of America without breaking out any stats on America. Just throw the overall tonnage of the business at people. It will take a couple months for them to figure out the US is not where it’s at,” she said.
“Right—we bluff. People think we have a $20 million stack in front of us,” Rabbit said, drumming his hands on the conference room table.
“Where we go from there is tricky. You can’t keep spending at that level, but you need to be spending here. Em needs to make it look like you are still in the US even if you aren’t. We can’t just go silent. That calls for stupid spend. Billboards, celebrity endorsers, anything but the online stuff that costs a lot of money.”
“Billboards. Put Lebron on them.”
“Something like that. You’d be surprised how cheap they are nowadays. Billboards, not Lebron. He’ll cost you a pretty penny. We’ll need someone else.”
“Ok, maybe someone who is big here, but much bigger overseas. Two birds, one stone,” Rabbit said.
“Yes, that’s good thinking. Now we need a trap.”
“Scare the shit out of people. Fake kidnap someone on Rizon. No—do it on Together.”
“Easy Rabbit. That’s going nuclear on the pool, not poisoning it. You can turn those services into cesspools without kidnapping anyone. You remember Chat Roulette?”
“The dick site?”
“Exactly. Both Together and Rizon are going to have very small numbers of users early on. It’s going to cost a lot of money to acquire them. Now if one in every three of them ends up with a set of Eyes that ask the Hands to whip their dicks out they are going to have a major quality of service problem. Now they are in a Catch 22 situation. Can’t spend more in marketing until you clean up the cesspool, can’t clean up the cesspool until you get better users.”
Rabbit smiled.
“I need to sell my bullets and start buying trolls.”
“Exactly.”
Guy Sam slid the piece of paper across the table to his sister. She looked down and studied it for a moment. Her fingernail went to one item. A silent question passed across. He nodded in affirmation.
“We think you can poison America for $5 million a month and that it will take six months to ruin the market. The more trolls you add, the higher your competitor’s acquisition cost, the faster they burn through their money. Our guess is that it will cost you $30 million give or take $5 million to kill Together and Rizon.”
“I can afford that.”
“We know you can and it’s well within our acceptable tolerance levels. We’ll report back to Kendra. She’ll be happy with your change in tactics.”
“Tell Kendra you are joining the Peared team until Together and Rizon are out of business. I need someone sophisticated to do this, and Paolo has to drive the rest of the world. Tell Kendra it’s not a request. It’s the soundest investment she can make.”