The Beginning of My Great Silicon Valley Novel
Does it entertain or does it suck?
The Meeting
The meeting started promptly at 10am. It was a typically beautiful Bay Area morning of indeterminate seasonality, could have been March, maybe September or November. Present were Rich Tempura, the company’s Director of Channel Marketing; Anil Subravishnumarapathutrum, the new bizdev guy; Corrie “Hard Core” Hardwick, the feared EVP/COO; and Keith.
“Allright, Keith, show us what ya got,” directed Rich in his typically breezy, faux-casual manner. “We need to get on-message, and quickly.”
The morning sun was a dusky orange as it attempted to blaze through the pimp-grey windows found throughout the offices of Bukakiowa’s new, semi-sprawling Santa Clara campus.
The company, founded by the remarkable pairing of an intense Japanese theology student from Kyoto and a laconic white American kid from Cedar Rapids who had met at the Gates of Hell (in the Rodin Garden) at Stanford, was riding the coattails of the greatest boom this boom-driven industry had ever witnessed.Growing 46 percent per year through the 90s, it was now generating almost a billion a month in sales, throwing off cash at ridiculous levels, and sporting a market cap approaching $200 billion.
Yet all was not precisely well in Bukakiowa-land. Similar growth was been enjoyed by the company’s main competitors as well as by a shitbasket-ful of newcomers from all over the world who had all just waltzed right in and sold iron and solutions to a base of corporate customers that seemed to have endless budgets and “imperatives to retain competitive advantage.”
Bukakiowa had actually lost market share in three out of four of its main hardware classes, and looked at another way, in most of its verticals as well. Only among the geeks did it remain the number one choice, and only in financial services did it maintain a grip on dominance. Add to that the fact that the co-founders’ new handpicked CEO, “Rip” Leighton, seemed bent on getting ripped and bent….
4:09:27 PM 
|
