Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

We offered her a job that Saturday lunch-time. She accepted it on Sunday. She took Monday to go into work to resign and she was in our office on Tuesday morning.

She turned out to be the final ingredient that made ninetyminutes.com really come alive. She listened to Gaz, encouraged him, and coaxed him into getting his ideas into some kind of priority. She talked to Owen about streamlining links and upload times, agreeing with all his concerns about scalability. And she told Mandrill what to do. It turned out that you can tell enigmatic men with goatees what to do, if you do it in the right way.

Under Ingrid’s guidance, our site was looking better and better. It was certainly an improvement on the other glitzy but clunky sites which inhabited the soccer space on the web. It looked professional. It looked a winner.

‘We need to move faster.’

I choked in my pint. Guy’s eyes were shining in that messianic way I was beginning to recognize whenever he was talking about Ninetyminutes’ future. ‘Move faster? You’re crazy. We can hardly keep up with things as they are now.’

We were in the Jerusalem Tavern, the pub just across the road from the office. It was half past nine, the end of another long day. But Guy had plenty of energy left.

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got forward momentum. Ninetyminutes will go as far as we push it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know all that stuff we were going to do in our second year? Open European offices, the on-line retailing, our own-brand merchandising?’

‘Yes.’

‘We should start on it now.’

‘But we’ve only just got the site going!’

‘I know. But it’s like this. There’s a land grab going on at the moment. It’s like the Californian gold rush. Amazon have got books in the US and in Europe. Tesco are going for grocery sales. Egg for on-line banking. We have to get soccer. We’re going to overtake the others in the UK, and we’ve got to overtake them in Europe too.’

‘But how can we manage all that?’

‘We’ll manage it. All we have to do is think big and think fast.’

He was mad. But probably right. It had to be worth going for. ‘We’re going to need more money. Now.’

Guy nodded.

‘I think it’s still a bit early to go to the venture capitalists.’

‘We have to do it.’

‘Your father won’t like it.’

‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘But I’m not going to worry about that now. Look. Think through how much we need and then let’s work out how to get it.’

It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. I smiled. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll work on it.’

I had only just started to get down to the numbers when the phone rang. It was Henry Broughton-Jones.

‘I took a look at your site the other day,’ he said. ‘Very impressive.’

‘I’m glad you like it. Although I never had you down as much of a football fan, Henry.’

‘I prefer the horses. Just to watch, you understand. Look, do you fancy a spot of lunch?’

If you are the finance director of a start-up and a venture capitalist asks you out to lunch, then you say yes. Especially when he seems pleased that you can fit it in the next day.

He chose a smart restaurant just off Berkeley Square, the like of which I hadn’t lunched in since my Gurney Kroheim days. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a suit, but green cords, checked shirt and a blazer, with ox-blood brogues. Sort of Wall Street dress-down casual meets Cirencester Agricultural College. It didn’t quite work.

‘So what’s this, Henry?’ I said. ‘Dress-down Friday on a Wednesday?’

‘It’s subtly chosen to impress thrusting entrepreneurs, David. You are impressed?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Actually, it’s a bloody nightmare,’ he said, running his hand through his thinning hair. ‘I much preferred pinstriped suit, blue shirt and a blue tie. This way my wife laughs at me every morning. She says blue and green don’t go together. Is that true?’

‘Couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid. It’s not the kind of thing we have to worry about on our side of the fence.’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’ He examined the menu. ‘Shall we get a bottle of wine? I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.’

‘Sure.’

Henry ordered an expensive Montrachet to go with our fish.

‘OK, Henry, what’s going on?’ I asked.

Henry laughed. ‘I’m being proactive. I want you to humour me.’

‘Proactive?’

‘Yes. We had a big strategy conference at Gleneagles a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the Internet. As you can’t help but have noticed, things are hotting up. In the States websites are going public at astronomical valuations. The VCs over there are making bucket loads of dosh. It’s going to happen here and we don’t want to be left behind.’

‘Of course not.’

‘As we see it we have two choices. We can either give the next twenty-five-year-old management consultant who comes through the door with a plan to sell bagels on-line a couple of million quid, or we can work out the sectors that look interesting, find the promising firms that operate in those spaces and see if they want our money. Make sure we get to them before someone else does. I thought you were a good place to start.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘I certainly am.’

‘So you’re going to give us money just like that?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Henry. ‘We’ll beg you to let us consider your business, string you along and then turn you down. We are venture capitalists after all.’

‘Henry?’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘You aren’t doing a very good job of marketing me.’

‘Aren’t I?’ He had a sly smile on his face. Henry was no fool. He knew he was hooking me with candour where bullshit would fail.

‘What about the management issues?’ I asked.

‘The rules are changing. You’ve started up. The site looks great. And you’ve got Tony Jourdan on board. Now he has made money before. Also, I know you: you’re a safe pair of hands.’

I winced. It might be true, but I didn’t want to be known as ‘a safe pair of hands’ any more. I wanted to be a successful, imaginative moneymaker. Give it time and I’d show Henry.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I never realized that Guy was Jourdan’s son.’

‘Sorry. We discussed telling you earlier, but Guy was dead against the idea. He wanted to raise money as his own man.’

‘Admirable, I’m sure.’ Henry sipped his wine appreciatively. ‘So. How’s Ninetyminutes getting on?’

I told him. I incorporated all Guy’s ideas for an accelerated roll-out into Europe and an early start on merchandising. I told him the visitor numbers and extrapolated them wildly.

‘Golly, David,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve never seen you that excited about anything before.’

I smiled. ‘Really?’ I thought about it. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘How much do you need?’

‘To do all that we need ten million pounds now, and maybe another twenty in six months.’

‘So Orchestra does this round and then we float the company in the spring?’

‘That will work. We should have a great story by then.’

‘Sounds good. Will you give us an exclusive to look at the deal?’

I couldn’t help laughing. Here was a venture capitalist asking me for the business.

‘Hey, that’s not fair!’ Henry protested.

‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to discuss it with Guy.’

‘You’ll let me know?’

‘I’ll let you know, Henry.’

Guy went for it. The following Monday, Henry arrived in our offices with his associate, Clare Douglas, a small, slim, no-nonsense Scottish woman with wispy blonde hair and enquiring grey eyes. They crawled all over us, asking everyone about everything. I was impressed by Henry’s thoroughness, but Clare was particularly well prepared. She must have spent the weekend scouring the web for everything she could find on football. She was a tenacious interrogator, picking up on any hesitation or waffle from any of us and pinning us down until she had the details right.