Learning Curve (21 page)

T
he quartet walked out of the office in pairs: Alison with Bellflower, Dan
with Validator. When Cosmo got a step ahead, Dan glanced back to see that Lisa Holmes hadn't followed them. She had already turned her back to the departing group to talk on her cell phone.

“After all this double dealing behind my back,” Alison hissed to Bellflower, “why should I even consider taking this offer?”

“Because,” he replied, “it'll still be the company you built, and you can't let it fail now right on the brink of such a huge success. And because it will make you one of the most powerful businesswomen in the world. Got anything better planned?”

Dan caught Validator's arm and stopped him. “I was doing a great job for you, Cosmo,” he said. “Why did you put me through this hell?”

Validator pulled himself to his full height. “Because,” he said, “you were a brilliant CEO of a mature company. But this business is changing fast. And if I was going to let you be the chairman of a company with my name on it, by God, I was going to make sure you knew how to think like an entrepreneur. You needed to be tested… just like young Miss Prue up there needed to learn how to be like you.”

“You should have trusted me.”

“I do, Dan. I've just given you the only thing in my life that I've ever really cared about. Isn't that enough?”

A small, folding campaign table had been set up the middle of the great hall. It bore a champagne bucket in a towel and a silver tray with four glass flutes. The four of them encircled it. “This was John C. Fremont's field desk,” said Cosmo. “Just imagine him and Kit Carson standing here, preparing to go off the map and conquer a new world.” He filled the glasses, handing each in turn to the others. Then he filled and raised his own glass.

Bellflower raised his glass as well. “A toast,” he said, “to the new Validator Software and the two people who will run it. May you be both smart and lucky.”

“And,” added Cosmo Validator, “may you never let them see the strings.”

B
ellflower and Validator were lost in conversation about children, grandchildren, and fishing expeditions. Dan walked out onto the big stone patio. The mountain peaks were now a deep orange, their bases turning gray-blue. Above, the setting sun had turned the sky and clouds blood red, streaked with flames.

He was joined by Alison Prue. Together, they stared silently at the vista.

“How did you manage to recruit Armstrong?” Alison asked.

“I gave him the one thing he really wanted.”

“What? Money? Stock? He had those.”

“No,” said Dan, “I gave him himself.”

“How good is that new product?”

“Good enough.”

Alison stared at him for a moment, then looked back to the sunset. “We beat you. None of this changes any of that. We beat you fair and square.”

Dan started to tell her that not a single word of that last sentence was true. But he caught himself. He was Alison's boss now, her mentor. They were now
in this together. “Yes,” he told her. “Yes, you did.”

The End

The Virtual Corporation

The Microprocessor: A Biography

Intellectual Capital

One Digital Day

Infinite Loop

Valley of Heart's Delight

Bill & Dave

The Future Arrived Yesterday

Four Percent

The Guardian of All Things

Coming Soon From Michael S. Malone

Trinity: The History of Intel Corporation

Michael S. Malone is one of the world's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the
San Jose Mercury News
as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter, where he was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as
The Wall Street Journal, The Economist
and
Fortune
, and for two years he was a columnist for
The New York Times.

He was editor of
Forbes ASAP,
the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of nearly twenty award-winning books, notably the best-selling
The Virtual Corporation, Bill & Dave,
and
The Future Arrived Yesterday.
Malone has also hosted three nationally syndicated public television interview series and co-produced the Emmy-nominated primetime PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, “The New Heroes.”

As an entrepreneur, Malone was a founding shareholder of eBay, Siebel Systems (sold to Oracle) and Qik (sold to Skype), and is currently a co-founder and director of new start-up PatientKey Inc. Malone holds an MBA from Santa Clara University, where he is currently an adjunct professor. He is also an associate fellow of the Said Business School at Oxford University, and is a Distinguished Friend of Oxford.

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