The manager at the Residence Inn, where they were squatting in the lobby using free internet, had finally decided to ask them to decamp elsewhere. They had spent the entire night working the floor at the Amazon Fulfillment Center just down the road and were not eager to head back into Boston for class.
Luckily, just around the corner, the Starbucks had opened. It was five in the morning as they stared out the windows at the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Massachusetts, as dawn broke. Zoey sipped from her hot cocoa, less than satisfied with it compared to what she makes at home. Margo was still waking up and looked quite sleepy.
“So, I don’t get it. What are you aiming for?” asked Margo, knowing she’d have to make a persistent effort to pull this out of Zoey, and also knowing Zoey was still in the process of formulating the answer in her head. Zoey’s face might have been expressionless, but the gears were turning in her head.
“Better.”
“That’s it? Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what…what’s better?”
“I can tell you what it’s not…”
“Okay.”
“It’s not kids and family, it’s not birthdays and barbecues, it’s not bridal showers and ball gowns, it’s not Rolexes or Mercedes, it’s not 600 bizillion friends and eleventy dozen pictures of me smiling with forced and staged joy on Faceshit, it’s not yachts or Infinity pools, it’s not Gucci or Chanel…it’s something more.”
Margo nods, understanding. “It’s impact.”
Zoey nods too, both of them entranced by the sunrise out the window.
“Impact.”
Margo wondered aloud though, “but it takes people…a network…and resources…and some sort of built reputation. We’ve got none of those. I thought this was the answer. This university is worthless.”
“They all are,” Zoey gave a slight giggle. “Until Steve, Joe, and Lev get back, we’ve got to improvise, adapt, and overcome. We build something that brings in our seed capital, made exclusively through elbow grease, take those funds and build a niche version of our ideal business, then take the funds from that and scale-out, then build our capital-intensive ideas with those funds, and once we’ve achieved some sort of internet-famous status to gain fellow investors.”
With an increasingly quickening pace, Margo replied, “That sounds like the path Elon Musk took. Decide early on to make an impact on energy, transportation, and space. Read voraciously. Go to school, get a physics degree to get a foundation of technology and problem-solving skills. Take the target of opportunity at the moment – the internet— and make ZIP2, then sell it to Compaq, buy a colossal status symbol – an ultra-elite sports car – then get CNN to tape you taking delivery of it in a fluff piece…start what’s initially planned as the first internet bank, build up a bunch more hoopla, merge it with PayPal and make a fortune in the eBay buyout, and with that network –‘the PayPal mafia’— invest in an electric car company with promise, start a rocket company, and get your brother to help you run a solar panel business.”
“Minus the fame part though: you can’t do illegal famously.”
“Well, there was Al Capone…”
With a wry smile, Zoey responded, “I’m no Al Capone. Anyways, I think we’ve gathered enough info. We didn’t uncover any useful secrets, but I think we can see that their publicly-stated principals work really fucking well. We need to talk to Steve about FedEx’s principles. Anything you want to add from your other friend at UPS?”
Margo, now more awake, said “Not much. I think our next thing really should be some Uber economics and stuff. Matching supply to the demand in real-time mixed with the mobile-geospatial. We’ve gotta reverse engineer that. Plus the right way to cloak this all.”
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