behind his head again and gazed at the two young men. Then he sat forward. ‘LRB won’t put three hundred in by itself. But I could potentially put that together through a syndicate with another couple of funds. We’d lead. We’d put in a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy-five. The rest would come from the others. How would you feel about that?’
‘I told Andrei that was how it would likely work,’ said Chris.
‘And?’
‘We’d need to have right of refusal over the other funds before you approach them.’
‘That could work. So … three hundred million for five per cent? Is that what you’re asking?’
Chris nodded.
Leib looked at Andrei. ‘Let’s be clear. Andrei, is that what you’re saying? You’re prepared to sell five per cent of your company for three hundred million.’
‘Yes,’ said Andrei.
‘And a seat on the board. We’d need a seat on the board.’
‘Yes.’
There was silence.
Chris could barely breathe. Meetings where the venture capitalist did the deal right then and there were the stuff of legend. Usually it took weeks of negotiation and hair-splitting.
Leib gazed at the screen of the tablet computer again.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Provided we can see the usual documentation and my guys can do the standard due diligence—’
‘Sure. Whatever you want—’
‘Just listen, Chris. Provided we can do the usual due diligence – and with one condition that I’ll come back to in a minute – I’ll put together a syndicate that will put in three hundred million for five per cent of this company, with the proviso that we have an option in twelve months to take another five per cent at the same valuation.’
Chris started to smile.
‘No,’ said Andrei. ‘That’s too much.’
‘What’s too much?’ asked Leib.
‘Another five per cent at the same valuation in twelve months is too much.’
‘Andrei,’ said Chris, ‘don’t you think we should—?’
‘If you want the option, Mr Leib, then it’s four per cent for three hundred million today and your option is for two per cent in twelve months for another three hundred million.’
‘That doubles the valuation in twelve months,’ said Leib.
‘I estimate we’re worth more than that already.’ Andrei shrugged. ‘If you don’t agree, you don’t have to take up the option.’
Again, Leib suppressed a smile. He quickly ran the numbers in his head, watching Andrei as he did it. He was increasingly impressed with the young man. Suddenly he rose from his chair and reached forward to shake Andrei’s hand. ‘Done!’ When he sat down again, he raised a finger in the air. ‘Now, I said this deal was dependent on one other condition. This has to be sustainable. You say the DA’s given up looking at you?’
Chris nodded.
‘That’s what I heard too.’ Leib smiled slightly. ‘I don’t give a fuck what some little DA in Santa Clara says.’ He gestured towards the tablet computer, where the final few lines of his conversation with Paul were still visible on the screen. ‘How can you guys guarantee me that that is legal?’
2
THE JOURNEY THAT led Andrei Koss to Robert Leib’s office had begun three years earlier, a couple of miles away in a student dorm at Stanford University. The autumn quarter that year brought together four juniors in a two-bed double in Robinson House, one of the accommodation blocks on Sterling Quad. Andrei was majoring in computer science. His roommate was Ben Marks, a psychology major from Baltimore. In the other room in the suite were Kevin Embley, a beefy Chicagoan majoring in economics with a more than passing interest in programming, and Charles Gok, a tall, gangly physics major with a bad case of acne.
Andrei was the youngest of three children of a Russian emigrant couple who had left Moscow for Boston when he was four. His father was a professor of linguistics at Harvard and his mother a hospital pathologist. There was no trace of Russian in Andrei’s accent. Standing slightly below average height, and a little awkward in his movements, he had won every high-school award going in physics and maths. He had been coding since he was twelve and his decision to major in computer science was more or less pre-ordained. While still at high school, he had written a clutch of internet apps, one of which had garnered a few users and which he had sold to a software developer for $200,000.
Andrei, Ben and Kevin knew each other from their first two years at Stanford. Charles was new to all three of them. As the four juniors settled in that fall, they spent