“That’s our lunch, man. Hands off. And, by the way—” Alex gestured toward me “—this is Melanie. Mel, this is Greg. Not that you need any introductions, since I know you two have already met.”
I could tell by his frown lines that Greg had absolutely no idea who I was. I’d spent hours salvaging data from his coffee-drenched hard drive, and he hadn’t bothered to commit my face to long-term memory.
“Anyway,” Alex continued, “we’re kind of in the middle of something here. Can you give us some space?”
“Uh...okay.” Greg stood, jamming his pilfered food into his mouth before ambling away. He left his chair jutting out into the middle of the sidewalk. Alex replaced it at the neighboring table.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
I forced a laugh. “It’s okay. Totally not your fault.”
“It kinda is. Greg’s my partner, after all.” He raked a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls. “Which is something I regret more with each passing day. I wish I’d never signed on to this project with him.”
“That’s awful. I’m sorry.” Though, truth be told, I was a little relieved. If Alex had actually felt like Greg—slack-jawed, tactless, dim-witted Greg—was an ideal business partner, I would’ve questioned his judgment. As it was, I couldn’t figure out why he’d teamed up with him in the first place. Or how they’d managed to score a spot at Hatch.
“Greg talked a big game when we first met,” he said, snapping a cracker in two.
“Did he?” Skepticism oozed from my pores.
“He seems stupid, I know, but he’s just really good at playing dumb to get out of things. When it comes to sales pitches and presentations, he’s a rock star.”
I tried to picture Greg standing in front of a room full of suits, delivering an articulate speech, gesturing to a polished PowerPoint presentation. The vision was incongruous with the Greg I knew, the guy who spoke only in sentence fragments and never looked me in the eye.
“How did you meet him?”
“At a tech meetup in Brooklyn. I was working this corporate job and hating it and wanted to try to get into the start-up world. Greg was there and we got to talking and he said he was super close to securing funding for Fizz. All he needed was a strong engineer. So I helped him with some specs and a mock-up to finish his application to Hatch. A few weeks later, I quit my job.”
“And now here you are.”
“Here I am. Except it’s not what I was expecting it to be.”
“What were you expecting it to be?”
He nibbled his cracker and shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. Not like this, though. Half the time, it’s like I’m working in a frat house.”
I could relate to that. Testosterone levels in the office were off the charts. Of course Josh Brewster got away with his “Free Mustache Rides” sticker. Any guy who complained about it would be seen as a traitor to his gender.
“Plus,” Alex continued, “I’m shouldering most of the workload right now. Greg’s not really holding up his end of the deal. He makes a lot of promises, but he’s not so good with the follow-through.”
“Can you complain to someone about it?”
“There’s no one to complain to. The investors don’t wanna hear it. Now’s the time when we’re supposed to be proving we can run a business independently. But honestly, I don’t think we can.”
Disappointment settled in the grooves etched across his forehead. And who could blame him? Imagine quitting your stable, if soul-sucking, job to take a chance on a fledgling start-up, only to discover your partner was a fraud and a flake. It made my gig at the help desk seem downright tolerable.
Alex shook his head, clearing away the furrows. “Anyway, like we were talking about on Friday, this is just a stepping-stone to bigger and better things.”
I swirled a bread crust in honey and took a sweet, crispy bite. “Totally.”
“How long have you been working at Hatch now?”
“About four years. I started right out of college.”
“Wow. You’ve probably learned so much about the start-up world. What works, what doesn’t. What investors look for in potential founders.”
I nodded. From my experience, there were two main requirements most start-up founders needed to secure seed funding: being a guy, and being a jerk. Of course, Alex only fulfilled the first of those two, but his partner more than compensated for the second with his obnoxious behavior.
“And I bet you’ve made a ton of contacts in the industry, too,” he said. “Especially with a new set of Hatchlings coming in every three months.”
“Not really. I work the help desk. Hatchlings aren’t really interested in discussing the business with me. They only ever acknowledge my existence when they have some laptop emergency, and then they come into my cubicle screaming their heads off and lobbing insults. Present company excluded, of course.”
His mouth hung open in shock. “That’s awful.”
Poor, naive Alex. So unaware of the inequities of the tech world.
“Look,” I said, “to be honest, all I want out of Hatch is a paycheck. And the health insurance is pretty sweet, too.”
“So, you’re not interested in launching your own start-up?”
“Of course I am.” The words burst forth with conviction. Because if I dug down deep into the softest parts of my core, I’d find this truth buried there: I did want a piece of the start-up pie. And not just a tiny sliver. I wanted a big, fat, decadent hunk of it. I wanted to create something of value, something that would make people’s lives better. To have a vision and to bring it to life.
I didn’t want to coast. I wanted to speed down the runway and take flight.
The problem was, my accelerator seemed to be jammed.
“Hatch just isn’t a good fit for me,” I said, grossly oversimplifying a complex and sexist situation.
“Have you ever been to any of the tech meetups around town? They have happy hours at least once a week. That’s where I connected with Greg.” He grimaced. “Though I realize that’s not a ringing endorsement.”
“Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of those.”
Actually, I’d been to only one. Two years earlier, and it was not the inspirational networking event I’d been promised.
I’d certainly had high hopes. Eager to make a good impression on potential collaborators, I designed business cards with a link to my programming portfolio, and bought a chic blazer on clearance to conform with the professional dress code. When I strolled into the vast conference space that night, I was feeling calm and confident, ready to reach out and grab entrepreneurship by the balls.