“That’s what you’re paying me for.” Jason smiled. “Anyway, let’s hit that meeting.”
As they walked the ten feet to the conference room, Mack mulled over how he was going to break the news about Casper’s departure. He had to tell the managers while also emanating a reassuring I’ve-got-this-all-under-control vibe. And after Jason’s little speech just now, Mack was also thinking that he needed to be not so subtly communicating that they had to start stepping things up. He’d make it clear, of course, that he was including himself in this directive. It was always better for morale when people felt like they were all in this together. As he approached the door to the conference room, he closed his eyes briefly and repeated to himself: Be the change. Be the change.
The five department Heroes were all sitting around the table. Oliver Brandt was the Sales and Biz Dev Hero, Jon Liu was the Engineering Hero, Isabel was the Engagement and Marketing Hero, Morgan Vickers was the Recruiting Hero, and Brandon Fisher was the temporary Product Hero. Jason took a seat next to Isabel. Mack didn’t think that Jason knew about him and Isabel—how would he?—and seeing them next to each other was making him a tiny bit jealous.
She was looking down, as though deliberately avoiding making eye contact with him. Still, he couldn’t help but notice the way her sweater revealed her collarbones, and then gently outlined her breasts. Ugh. Those breasts. Those perfect, perfect breasts. Was it really possible he might never see them, touch them, suck on them ever again? It couldn’t be. How could it be? Not only was she blowing him off, but she was clearly involved with Andrew Shepard, at least if her Snapchat was to be believed. And Andrew Shepard was so annoying! He had very ostentatiously not taken any venture funding for Magic Bean, and he gave interviews where he talked about how important it was to him and his co-founder to maintain complete control over their company and to grow at a rate that felt reasonable to them—the implication being, of course, that taking venture funding might be tempting in the short term, but in the long term, the real winners would be the people who held on to the equity in their companies. Founders who didn’t take funding were called bootstrappers because they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, but Mack happened to know that Andrew had just a tiny leg up, having come from one of the wealthier real estate families in New York City. It was always much easier to bootstrap when your safety net was just beneath you—and super-cushy.
“Okay, let’s get started.” He willed himself not to look at Isabel, unless she was speaking, for the rest of the meeting. It was only then that he noticed Brandon was wearing a dinosaur onesie. Another fucking Onesie Day? He decided to ignore it. “First, I just want to remind everyone—and to tell you, Brandon, since this is your first Heroes meeting—that these meetings are confidential, both internally and externally. We’re a very open company, as you know, but there are always going to be issues that need to be kept among a small group.” He used to love that this group included Isabel; it gave the room an extra electric charge. Now he wished he could kick her out. “So. The good news is we are about to close another round of funding.”
“Yes!” Jason slapped his hand down on the table and yelled so loud that Mack was sure the rest of the office had probably heard him. “Mack, you are the motherfucking man.”
Mack smiled and gave Jason a slight nod to thank him for the show of enthusiasm. “We’re still signing papers, and everyone’s lawyers are still going over stuff, but I’m hoping to be able to announce the news at next week’s Taking Off.”
“That is stupendous,” Oliver said. He was tall and thin and was wearing his typical outfit of a blue blazer, a pink button-down shirt with no tie, jeans, and loafers. “Truly stupendous, Mack. This will help us close a few deals.”
“Rock on, man,” Brandon said.
“It’ll help with recruiting,” Jon Liu said quietly. He and Mack were constantly at odds about tech recruiting—Mack was convinced that it should be easy to hire engineers, given how hot TakeOff was and all the perks they offered, not to mention the fact that the company was in New York City, while Jon insisted that the real perks and status were in Silicon Valley, and it was incredibly difficult to convince top engineering talent to move across the country, and they needed to be offering higher starting salaries, and…Mack usually tuned out the rant at this point.
“Definitely,” Morgan said. “I have a couple of candidates in the pipeline who will be very pleased to hear this news.”
Isabel was the only one in the room who hadn’t said anything. He gave her a second to chime in, and when she was still silent, he continued.
“Good,” Mack said. “Now the not-so-great news. As you can see, Brandon has taken Casper’s place at the table today—because Casper is moving on from TakeOff. This is his last week here.” The room was silent, as though this was news to everyone. Could Casper and Brandon really have kept it a secret? “This is going to leave us scrambling if we’re not careful. We have the new beta we’re pushing out in a few weeks, and with this new round of funding there are gonna be a lot of eyes on us. There’s gonna be press, there’s gonna be people talking about us all over, and we need to make sure we are at the top of our game.” Everyone in the room nodded. Mack was feeling good—it was definitely smart of him to have led with the funding announcement, because it not only made people more secure in their jobs and in him, but also made them feel special that they had been let in on this secret before everyone else.
People just wanted to feel special. They wanted to feel like you saw them, like you could really see and appreciate what they were about. If nothing else, making people feel special was something Mack could handle.