The Founder (Trillionaire Boys' Club Book 7) Read online

“Disappear where?”

  “Who knows? But Ross wouldn’t be the first eccentric billionaire to go Howard Hughes. In fact, you know who else did it? Howard Hughes.”

  “The irony.”

  “You almost there?” Taylor asks.

  I sigh. I’m not going to get through that recording, and I can’t postpone the developer meeting. Every day for the next two weeks is packed.

  “Probably five more minutes.”

  “Good. I’ve got something else to tell you about. Something you need to know. This is big, Evan.”

  I check the time on my phone. “If it’s so big, can it even fit into a five-minute discussion?”

  “It’ll have to,” Taylor says, “because it’s all the time we have.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  REBECCA

  I ACTUALLY SPILL MY COFFEE when I see how well my little dick ads are doing.

  I’m staring at rows of numbers, ignoring the people who are still watching me live, eager to hear what I have to say. I always, always multitask, and right now my website’s live chat is going with the webcam on. Readers are sending me little lines of interrogative text from behind the LiveLyfe ads window even while my attention strays elsewhere:

  What’s going on?

  lol her mouth is hanging open

  HEY, REBECCA!!!

  whats she looking at

  Becky?

  Hilariously, it’s the last chat that snaps me out of my haze. I hate being called Becky. Becca is okay, but once, horribly, someone decided I was a “Reba.” I want to bury the ads window and return to chat so I can tell foxygent14 to never, ever call me “Becky.”

  “Hang on, you guys,” I say into the mic.

  A flurry of “what” and “why” chats scroll past. When I stopped paying attention and my mind wandered again, there were 141 people in the chat room for my little webcam rant. I have a squirrel’s brain. Fortunately, my fans are used to it by now.

  I squint at the screen. Yes, ad set 14, entitled simply “Microdick,” is outperforming all of my intentional ads by literally a thousand to one.

  Fans continue to chatter. They’ll eventually forget I’m here or I’ll forget they’re here. It’s happened before. I once took a consulting call without a top on by mistake. It was hot in the house because the A/C was busted so I went shirtless. I thought I was entering into a voice-only call until my client finally asked if I knew that my boobs were hanging out.

  “Get this,” I tell the people in chat. Then I screenshot the ads window. I’m pretty sure there’s confidential information that I shouldn’t be showing to anyone, but I share it anyway. The chat responds.

  wut lol

  microdick?

  What am I looking at?

  Your middle name is Joyce?

  I print the screenshot. I get that it wastes paper and kills trees and stuff, but I can’t pay attention to my broadcast and the ads window at the same time.

  The fans wait patiently. This isn’t the first time I’ve gone ADHD on them. Before noticing the ads thing, I’d been mid-rant about the time Steve pooped his pants. Technically, I should finish the story. It makes Steve look like the asshole he is. But then again, the ad makes him look stupid, too.

  I get transfixed for a while, trying to decide. Fans tell me that I act like I’m high all the time. But really, that’s only when I’m manic. Mania sells — who knew my crazy personality was a bonding agent? — so, I play into it. But in reality, I’m not like that all the time. My website is all laughs at Steve’s expense, but my adoring fans must understand that I’m a two-sided coin. Hilarious when I’m “on,” I suppose. But alone, I’m anything but.

  Comedians, they say, are the most fucked-up, depressed people in the world. And I, more than most, know that “funny” often comes with an unfortunate tax.

  Before I launched this website to punch Steve in his tiny little dick, I spent two nights in a deep dark pit, wishing I couldn’t feel anything. After writing a particularly hilarious post about some shitty thing Steve did to me, I typically curl up and cry until my chest hurts. The rant I did about the time Steve emailed a prostitute on Craigslist to ask if anal cost extra (and then told me he was “only curious” when I found the email and confronted him) is one that my fans say they laugh at the hardest. But it was the opposite of funny at the time.

  “You guys,” I say to the people watching me now. “The line in that screen shot that shows the biggest numbers? It’s the gag ad. Remember the gag ad?”

  I pull up the ad and share it, to refresh their memories.

  Most of the ad is an image: a photo Steve texted me after I’d dumped him for cheating on me for the second time. It shows Steve full-frontal nude with his sad little dick and balls on display like the fan of a pathetic but delusional peacock. I guess the photo was supposed to entice me to come back so I could take a ride on his tiny nub for old time’s sake.

  Instead, I saved it. I photoshopped Richard Nixon’s face over his junk very small, and captioned it: TINY DICK? I submitted the ad to LiveLyfe fully expecting it to be rejected. When it wasn’t, I decided to create a custom ad set of people who liked my page so I could serve it to them as a joke. Only people who already knew me were supposed to see that ad, but I did something wrong and it went out to like half the internet — an enormous number of whom have already clicked on the ad’s promise of a “free miniature something.”

  The “miniature something” is a haiku I wrote. About Steve’s tiny dick.

  Pecker of small size

  Looks like a tiny mushroom

  Not good on pizza

  The system that sends out the haiku is fully automated: people click the ad and they fill out a very short form (the title is “Don’t worry. This form is tiny. Like Steve’s dick.”) Then, they’re added to an email autoresponder sequence, and they get a blast of poetry. I have to assume the folks clicking the ads are guys with micropenises, eager for a cure. But strangely, I’ve gotten no complaints.

  Your haiku skills are strong, I imagine one such non-existent complaint reading, but what about my tiny dick?

  If I got emails like that, I’d do two things. First, I’d do my best to make friends with the people who sent them, because even confused and unintentional fans can become loyal fans. Second, I’d introduce them to my website, SteveHasATinyDick.com. Thanks to my Photoshop skills, Steve’s non-hanger can make even the smallest man feel like a giant.

  I scribble a note to myself. I want to add another email to the sequence so that after people get my haiku, they eventually get my website URL. I’ve grown my business in stranger ways.

  But writing the note distracts me further, and all of a sudden, I’ve unintentionally ended the webcam broadcast. Dammit. Now those 141 people might never learn what happened after Steve got drunk in that hotel bar and crapped his trousers.

  (Answer: He booked a room at the hotel so he could shower, suggesting I go home while he slept it off. I took an Uber, leaving Steve the car. Halfway home, I realized I had his only set of car keys in my purse and told the driver to turn around. When I went up to the room to give Steve his keys, I found him with two escorts. He’d used my credit card to pay for them.)

  I forget what I’m writing halfway through the note. I’m such a mess. Sometimes I wonder how I function, but I suppose I shouldn’t question a system that works. My first company was built on a grudge, meant as a fuck-you to my skeezy friend Benji and his dumb info products. I sold that company last year for 1.4 million dollars. Despite being founded on mockery and lacking logical products, SteveHasATinyDick.com is on track to grow even bigger.

  I even have a book deal brewing. The working title is Steve Has a Tiny Book. Despite the title, the book itself will be huge so that Steve’s identity-obscured photos will seem to have even tinier dicks by comparison. It’ll be the coffee table book that pleases nobody.

  I go back to the ads window. I get curious, so I click to see the “microdick” ad’s demographics. LiveLyfe ads are great; they practical
ly steal the identities of the people ads are shown to so that entrepreneurs like me can know exactly who’s seeing their stuff.

  I expect it to be all middle-aged men. Probably ones with hairy backs and weight problems.

  The people clicking on my ad are almost entirely women. Middle to upper-middle class, an average age of 39, many self-employed and almost all self-identifying as “successful” per LiveLyfe surveys.

  And divorced.

  Or, once I poke further, showing membership in LiveLyfe groups like “Die Cheater” and “Drinking Games for Jilted Dames.”

  And I think, Holy shit, these women are me.

  I’m not 39, but otherwise, that’s me: upper-middle class, successful and independent, despite Steve’s dragging-down and hooker-purchasing influence, jilted and hilariously vengeful. These ladies are my peeps.

  I’ve managed to target an extremely successful ad for my ideal audience without even meaning to.

  I pick up the phone. I get Benji on the first ring. The asshole was actually named after the movie dog. But unlike that pup, Benji has no sense of morality. He made a quarter-million dollars selling a slimy get-rich quick course called “How to Make $41,394 in 92 Days.” It sold because the precise numbers made it feel real. Benji didn’t have to issue many returns after the “system” failed his clients because they were too embarrassed to admit they’d bought a course with that name.

  “Stop masturbating and listen,” I tell him.

  “I wasn’t masturbating.”

  “I just sent you some screen shots. Take a look.”

  Benji does. He’s a skeeve, which means he’s metal and I’m a magnet. But it’s fine. Benji, despite his faults, was one of the first people to tell me that I needed to dump Steve. I might have listened if I wasn’t so broken inside.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Remember that joke ad I wanted to have LiveLyfe serve to my fans?”

  Benji laughs.

  “I screwed something up. Tell me what you see.”

  Benji considers. “Well, you served the ad to women.” He paused. “Wait.”

  “You’re seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “There’s a mistake, Becca. Ads don’t convert this high.” I hear clicks on his end of the phone. “I’d ask how you’re affording it, but it looks like you’re not spending very much at all.”

  “So, we’re in agreement. I’ve stumbled into a weird way to get a ton of perfect fans for pennies. And because my average customer’s lifetime value is …”

  “Yes, Becca. You’re about to blow your business up and make a shit-ton of money — stupid amounts of money, if you convert as well as you usually do — from this one little ad. How the hell did you manage to—?”

  “Thanks, Benji.”

  I hang up to an unmistakable note of envy in his voice. If Benji could buy ads for his dumb-ass products as cheaply as I’ve managed to, and get the people who click to become his paying customers half as well I can, he’d be driving a solid-gold Rolls Royce by sundown. But the joke is on him; I don’t have a secret to share. I messed up and got lucky.

  Lucky in business like I’ve been over and over and over again.

  At least that’s how it seems to me.

  My dad tells me that a person gets lucky once, not over and over. He says that I’m not working randomly and finding diamonds by accident. I’m a ninja, with great instincts. I did everything wrong when I built my first business. When I thought I was happy in my relationship, I talked about my boyfriend in all those company emails to potential customers. Then when Steve screwed me over and I decided to start SteveHasATinyDick.com out of spite, all those potential customers (who seemed to have already decided Steve was terrible from how I talked about him in happy times) turned into instant fans. My emails and broadcasts made them love me and hate Steve, and the site blew up from the day I announced it.

  Again, I got lucky.

  My dad’s voice in my head: You didn’t get lucky with the business or the website or even the ads, Becca. You’re smart. You have great instincts. You make all the right choices without even meaning to.

  Okay, Dad, I think. If I make all the right choices, how did I end up with Steve?

  Internal-Dad is silent.

  I decide to send an email to my newest ladies — the ones the ad brought in. I don’t have a reason; I’m just working from my gut like always.

  I start writing the email, and the first word out of my typing mouth is Shit. I’m so terrible at this.

  There’s a bong, and a popup appears in the corner of my screen. My overactive brain takes a few seconds to register why that strikes me as strange, but then I have it: I turned LiveLyfe to Do Not Disturb when I started my webcam rant and forgot to turn it off. Nobody’s supposed to be able to reach me.

  Slightly annoyed, I move to close the window.

  But then I pause.

  It’s from LiveLyfe’s head honcho, Evan Cohen himself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EVAN

  I KEEP CHECKING MY PHONE for the time because I’m already late. Sam was going to join me in walking loops around the building. We were going to knock out the fifty or so little issues that managed to trickle their way all the way up the corporate chain and now require my attention. It’s usually easy. Sometimes senior developers (and VPs who aren’t confident enough in their own decisions) manage to bully their way into demanding my opinion rather than let themselves be handled by the gatekeepers beneath me. But the issue in those cases is insecurity or chest-pounding rather than problems. Sam will read them to me, and I’ll tell him how to respond. Then we’ll go through my most important emails, and he’ll give me the gist of a few messages people left with the receptionist.

  I figure we can bang it all out in the half-hour between my return from the rock gym and my meeting with Carl Vickers from PlayMaker. It will be tight, with no time to shower before Carl, but I pay him enough to deal with my sweat.

  I get back ten minutes early and find myself blessed with a bounty of extra time — a good thing, because now I can investigate before joining Sam to clear my to-do list. What Taylor told me in the car this morning — about this “Rebecca Presley” woman and her LiveLyfe ads — has my brain percolating with ideas. I could barely concentrate during my climb. I blew a 5.10a route that I was sure I’d manage to reach the top of today, but the chance to poke around in Ms. Presley’s business made up for it in the end.

  Or so I thought.

  Turns out, Ms. Presley takes more than a quick few minutes to understand. I typed her name into Forage before opening her ads console, just to see what comes up. Most of the results are about an internet hustler who went viral with a product called “How to Get Guys to do Exactly What You Want Every Time You Ask for Anything.” It’s clearly a different Rebecca Presley (Taylor told me the one we care about has a joke site about her ex-boyfriend’s tiny penis), but I click out of curiosity, and end up reading her entire sales page. That alone swallows my ten available minutes, but it’s worth it. The copy is brilliant. I almost want to buy her little course, just because her writing is so personable and engaging; even though I don’t care about getting guys to do exactly what I want every time I ask for something.

  At some point, I realize I’m not wasting my time. The copy on the “How to Get Guys to do What You Want” sales page starts ringing little bells inside my mind. For one, it’s totally unprofessional — obnoxious, almost, in an adorable sort of way. Second, at some point in the sales letter, she stops talking about the course entirely and diverts into a sideline story about her sister, who got crabs while in Mexico. There is no relevance to this story as far as I can see, except that it keeps me reading — right into the part where the author mentions her boyfriend, Steve.

  That’s when I figure it out. This is the same Rebecca Presley. The “How to” course is something she did years ago — on a dare, apparently, because she tells that story in the schizophrenic sales copy, too: how her friend Benji launched some stupid on
line course and how she accepted his dare to do better. Rebecca’s admission about the dare is right there in the sales copy plain as day, but somehow it fits. As does this line:

  “So yeah, I made this thing as a total cash whore. I’m selling it so I can show Benji that he’s a douchebag and that a girl can beat him at his own game. But what do you care? I read all the books about relationships and psychology and even that pick-up-artist manual ‘The Game,’ and all I learned combined with what I already know, which is a lot, I put it in the course you’re about to buy, and you really can get guys to do whatever the hell you want. Seriously, I know my shit. Unlike Benji, I can actually help you learn something.”

  Mentions of Steve, Steve, Steve. It’s obviously the same Steve that Taylor told me about, except that when Rebecca wrote the sales page, she seems to have still liked him. I read the page, getting to know Rebecca, her sister, her mom, and Steve.

  I look through the other results. I find a blog and an early LiveLyfe profile. Then two websites with tiny businesses still percolating along. All written in the same irreverent, self-deprecating style, all every bit as engaging as the sales page.

  It dawns on me that this woman is a genius. I doubt she knows it. She’s bent Forage to her will, showing up on the first page of results when I search for “relationship course” and “how to meet men.” Her little websites must be raking in cash, and yet they sound like they were written by someone with zero personal boundaries. Most online marketers talk like scumbags, but Rebecca’s sites all read like ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary.’

  Even before I find the SteveHasATinyDick page, I realize I like Rebecca very much. I wouldn’t want to be part of her schizo life because she’d tell her readers every little thing about me, but I like her just fine. I also like her sister. And her mother. The only one I don’t trust is Steve, who comes off less like a lovable fuckup and more like a sleaze.

  And this website. How did Steve finally screw up enough to earn such abuse?