There was one person at MorningRave who did not post any selfies to Instagram. She was there to dance, and only to dance. Nor did she say hello to Mack. She knew who he was, but he was not yet aware of her existence. Katya Pasternack was at the party with her boyfriend, Victor, who himself was a founder of a small company called StrollUp. Katya was twenty-four years old, but ever since she was a child, people had said she had an old soul. From what she could tell, this mostly meant that she preferred the company of people older than herself. One of the exceptions was this party, which she loved. Katya weighed ninety-one pounds and had never gone to a gym a day in her life, but she danced at this party as though it were her job. Her actual job was as a reporter for TechScene. She took a break from dancing—Victor was at the bar, getting a green juice—squinted and scanned the crowd. Besides Mack, she recognized no fewer than seventeen startup founders. She took out her phone and noted all of their names, just in case she felt compelled to write something about any of them later.
At exactly 9:00 a.m., the music stopped, and the dancers cheered again. They held their phones up to record this moment, when the thick curtains on the windows of the club would be drawn back, and the crowd would recite, in unison, “Good morning, good morning, great morning!” and then a cheer, louder than before, would erupt. They posted this moment on Snapchat and Instagram, on Twitter and Facebook, anywhere that their message—I was here—could be loudly, clearly received.
Most of them still clutched their phones a few minutes later as they headed out into the morning. Although their eyes blinked as they adjusted to the sunlight, all of them had their heads down, looking at their phones. They needed to see how many people had liked their Instagrams, if anyone had viewed their Snapchat videos, how many likes and comments—so jelly!!!!!; omg i can’t believe i missed this; i’m here too! where u at—they’d gotten on Facebook, how many people had retweeted their observation about this being the best party ever. Mack noted, with no small degree of satisfaction, that his selfie already had 129 likes. Katya pulled a long-sleeved shirt over her head, kissed Victor good-bye, and started walking toward the L train to go to work.
Neither of them knew it yet, but Katya Pasternack’s and Mack McAllister’s lives would be intersecting again very soon.
1
Do the Math
Two Weeks Later
MACK MCALLISTER EXITED his East Village apartment building wearing a royal-blue gingham-checked button-down shirt tucked into jeans and a navy blazer. He carried a soft brown leather briefcase with two buckles, given to Mack by his father when he graduated from the University of Texas and on which his initials—WSM, William Sumner McAllister—were embossed in gold capital letters. His dark brown hair was close-cropped, which highlighted his somewhat ungainly ears. Mack considered his ears his secret weapon in that they made him just slightly unattractive, a characteristic that he found made him irresistibly disarming to women.
This morning, Mack had agreed to give a breakfast presentation at Startup Boot Camp, an incubator that gave founders office space and access to venture capitalists and other successful entrepreneurs for one year in exchange for 10 percent of their companies. His Uber, a silver Prius, pulled up right as he put his headphones on and opened the MindSoothe meditation app on his phone. He hit pause as he confirmed his destination, an office building in the financial district, with the driver. Then the opening chimes played, and a soothing female voice said, “Welcome to your meditation session. For the next twenty minutes, you have granted your mind and your body permission to connect with the world of thought and feeling.” He closed his eyes. Certainly an Uber in Manhattan at rush hour was not the most conducive atmosphere for meditation, but Mack had made it a goal to try to meditate in the most inhospitable environments. Anyone could meditate in a silent, darkened room, but could you find peace crawling down Broadway? That was the mark of true enlightenment. Meditation was relatively new in Mack’s life, despite the fact that he had developed a workplace-wellness app. But the practice had become popular in the startup scene as a kind of self-improvement mechanism—supposedly even Zuck was a devotee—and it did seem like people at TakeOff were much more productive ever since he had begun offering guided meditation in the office once a week.
As the car inched along, honking every minute or so, he tried to focus on what the app was telling him—“Continue to bring awareness to the breath.” But his mind kept drifting to his meeting with Gramercy Partners next week, where he was going to make a case to the partners that they should lead his next round of funding, his Series A round. He knew it was ambitious, but he was hoping for a valuation of six hundred million dollars, and then, maybe, just maybe, the next round of funding would value TakeOff at over one billion. In startup parlance, TakeOff would be a unicorn. Silicon Valley might have already been overrun by unicorns, but here in New York City, they were still a rare and coveted breed.