TUNA LIFE (12 page)

Eddie Molan strolled over to the window and peeked out at the parking lot below. “When I took over the mayoral chair I was so motivated to make changes. Absolutely everything we do can be done cheaper and more effective. After having been here for six months I realise it isn’t that easy. Everything I propose is met with resistance. I thought, after having been married for twenty-five years, that I knew something about compromising. I knew nothing. My fulltime job is to make compromises, to ensure that everyone gets something, so that I at least get one out of a hundred proposals through. It’s frustrating.”

“I understand,” Vesna nodded. She had pulled out her iPad and started taking some notes.

“No notes today, Vesna. What I tell you today is strictly off the record. Nothing will ever reach your readers. Is that ok?”

“Ok,” Vesna Connor replied, hesitatingly putting the iPad away.

“I will hold a press conference sometime within the next three months. In that press conference I will declare that I want to create an Australian Silicon Valley here on the Gold Coast.”

It was as if Vesna’s jaw dropped to the floor. The mayor had had the exact same thought as she had. What were the odds of something like that occurring?

“How do you plan to achieve that?” she asked, struggling to conceal her mixed emotions. She wasn’t sure whether she was happy that the mayor would help the city, or whether she was angry he was about to steal her idea.

“By investing lots of money,” the mayor smiled. “We can sit here until we turn green, waiting for the government to roll out fibre optical networks across Australia. The reality is that the Gold Coast and Australia are hopelessly behind the rest of the world when it comes to internet speed and technology. I’ll make sure we will be at the top of the class in less than a year.”

Vesna stared astonished at the mayor. “But where are you going to get money from? The City Council is already budgeting with a record-breaking deficit due to the new light rail.”

“The light rail project was a monumental mistake. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. We are too far ahead in the process,” the mayor said. He was talking about the massive light rail project that had led to most of the streets of Surfers Paradise being covered by gaping holes. What was supposed to be an environmentally friendly contribution to make people drive fewer cars had turned out to be the exact opposite. Due to the construction work the driving time between most places on the Gold Coast had at least doubled. And if you spoke to locals there was little to no chance they would ever use the light rail when it was completed. The coverage was simply not good enough, and the proposed prices were too dear. The council was therefore building a transport system only a selective group of tourists and permanents would ever use. Another example of the monetary waste Eddie Molan wanted to reduce.

“We will borrow cheap money,” Eddie Molan said. “The Chinese are willing to invest.”

“The Chinese?” Vesna repeated, gobsmacked. She knew the mayor had good contacts in Asia. It was one of the reasons he had received such strong support from the tourist industry in his mayoral bid. Asia, and China in particular, was their most important trade partner, and its influence just kept increasing. There were even rumours that the City Council wanted to create a Chinatown in Southport.

“They want to do a joint venture with the Gold Coast City Council. Fifty-fifty split of expenses.”

“And what do they get in return?” Vesna was by nature suspicious. When something sounded too good to be true – it usually was.

“The Gold Coast City Council will offer free WiFi in two new technology hubs. We are planning to centre these around Bond University in Varsity and Griffith University in Southport. The Chinese investors will own parts of the network, and will be able to make money by selling capacity to professional users, first-class high-speed networks for businesses and the like. They will also be given the opportunity to work more closely with Australian technology companies. Australia is the gate to the Asian market. By cooperating with the best and most innovative Australian technology companies they will have a short distance to their own market.”
“And what is my planned part in this?” Vesna asked. She didn’t have a good feeling.

“Continue with your articles. Success begets success. I sincerely believe we can create a small miracle here on the Gold Coast, and I want the Gold Coast Times’ support and blessing.”

“You know I can’t give you that,” Vesna replied. She felt pressured into a corner. There was nothing she wanted more than to help the Gold Coast become a new Silicon Valley. But she needed to maintain her integrity, the integrity of the paper. She needed to be unbiased.

“I can promise you we will continue to write about success stories on the coast. Every single one we can find. We want the same. There is nothing we in the Times want more than to see the Gold Coast blossom again. But the same way you have to make compromises in your job I have to make compromises in mine. I can’t only report the pleasant stories.”

“I think we understand each other, Vesna. I think we are quite alike, you and I.”

Vesna didn’t know whether she should take the comment as a compliment or not. And she immediately regretted her wording. She should have said she could never make compromises, that the media only reported facts.

“Do you own or do you rent?” the mayor asked Vesna as she got up from her chair.

“Rent,” Vesna said. “Trying to save up enough money for a deposit.”

“Varsity Lakes is not a bad area to invest when this goes through. The prices there are undervalued as it is.”

Vesna nodded. She didn’t know much about the real estate market. She was content renting. Content with not having a massive mortgage hanging over her head. A mortgage that tied her to a place, a job, and a certain life. She was still young. Wanted to experience the world. If it hadn’t been for her ridiculously successful brother it would have been easier to take a year off. A year of travelling. A year of writing the film script she had harboured in her head since she was a teenager. It was about time there was a proper female superhero. Spider-Man, Batman, Superman. There were hundreds of male superheroes. No one had yet managed to create a proper female superhero. Not from a female’s perspective.

It was time.

28

MONTH 4

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 8

NUMBER OF USERS: 5 MILLION

VALUATION: $750K – UNKNOWN

“Yeaah.”

“Legendary.”

“OMG!”

The outcries were only interrupted by sporadic rounds of applause and convulsive laughter.

The mood was good in Frank Geitner’s basement. Andrew had used the last injection of fresh cash from Roman to hire a couple of programmers and a support person. The Tuna Life team headcount was now eight, but they were still based in Frank’s basement. They were all staring at the big screen, especially installed for the occasion. Samsung was having its launch party for its new flagship mobile, the Galaxy S4, at a theatre in New York. In a relatively short space of time Samsung had established itself as the new star in the mobile phone hardware universe. After the death of Steve Jobs, Apple had struggled to maintain its image. It had gone from being cool and innovative to becoming slow and boring. Roman Bezhrev had compared the mobile phone market with the night clubs he owned. You could have the coolest club in the city one week, just to find that it was out the next. When something like that happened it was almost impossible to get your mojo back. The easiest solution was to close up shop, change the interior and rebrand the place. Then you simply reopened the next week. If you did it right you never went out of fashion. Roman owned four nightclubs in Surfers, plus the strip club. None of them had ever been closed for more than a week. They were always cool.

Right now Samsung was the coolest name in the mobile industry. But the session that was streamed live from New York was anything but cool. Steve Jobs had strolled around in his black turtleneck shirt and worn jeans. He had built up the tension during his long monologues so that everyone at the keynote sat as if hypnotised in their seats, waiting for what he was about to pull out of the bag in the last five minutes. And then he had said it: Just one last thing, we have built this thing called iPod, called iPhone, called iPad, called anything. And out of nowhere he had revealed a product the world didn’t even know it needed, a product the world didn’t even know it needed before people tried it out, and realised that they could never return to a world without it.

Instead, Samsung served up a live theatre play, a proper Broadway production. With overplaying actors they attempted to illustrate how their mobile could be used in daily situations.

Andrew fretted. The idea was good – the execution embarrassing. He knew Tuna Life was the only external app Samsung would be showing off at the event. Tuna Life was finally ready with their long awaited Android version, and they had been given the incredible opportunity to be showcased at Samsung’s extravagant launch event.

Were they about to become the laughing stock of the tech world?

Suddenly the basement went dead silent. You could almost hear a pin fall when the step-dancing and overplaying ten-year-old Jeremey was applauded off the scene in New York. A young woman replaced him. She looked around a few times. It appeared that she was pretending to wait for a bus or something. Another woman arrived on stage. She walked up to the first woman and stopped barely five metres away. Maybe she was pretending to wait for the bus as well, Andrew thought. She was dressed in a beautiful red summer dress. The first woman discreetly pulled out her mobile phone, a Samsung S4 of course, and then she snapped a picture of the woman in the red dress.

The massive screens surrounding the New York Radio City Music Hall came to life. The Samsung S4 logo disappeared, and was replaced by a picture of the woman in the red dress. A finger pushed the button ‘TRY ME’ and the screen was filled by a picture of the first woman. But she
was now wearing the red dress. At least that was what appeared to have happened. The picture was crystal clear. There was nothing indicating it had been created by a computer program, by a mobile phone app.

A gasp rippled through the crowd. A new finger appeared at the big screen and pressed the button ‘SHOP’. An extensive list of pictures and web stores popped up on the screen. They were ranked on a percentage basis. One of the pictures had a 100% score. It meant that the app had found the identical dress. Others had lower scores.

The woman ranked the pictures after price – cheapest first.

She then quickly oriented herself to a dress that had a 78% score, but was three hundred dollars cheaper than the 100% score dress, which had a price tag of five hundred dollars.

The audience applauded as she pressed the ‘BUY’ button. And for the first time no one was laughing.

Andrew smiled as one of the programmers gave him a pat on the shoulder. The launch had been an indisputable success. They had owned the show, owned the show without even being present.

Andrew thought back on something he had read about Steve Jobs. How Steve had always managed to create his own reality around Apple’s products. It was claimed that Steve Jobs could convince anyone about anything. He was so well-spoken, so convincing, so gifted that in the end you believed whatever he said. If he claimed that all of Apple’s competitors were miles behind them in product development, then you believed it. If he claimed that nobody wanted large screens on their phones, then you believed him. He had this reality-distortion field he surrounded himself with. In his presence his word was reality.

Today Tuna Life had taken over this reality-distortion field. There was no one above, no one beside. Tuna Life was in a class by itself. What on Earth would they come up with next, the tech-reporters asked. The rumours had already started to spread on various internet forums. Software that could show how you looked with a new haircut, new tits, new make-up. New everything. The opportunities were unlimited. And who was this Andrew Engels? The founder who had come out of nowhere and built one of the fastest growing companies in the history of the mobile industry. Too cool to even make a personal appearance on the launch of their new Android app.

Andrew glanced at his mobile phone. Fifteen missed calls. He knew who was calling. The press needed a face.

This was what Roman had warned him about. Warned wasn’t the correct word – prepared him for. Andrew would become Tuna Life’s public face. He would be representing Tuna Life and everything the company stood for.

Roman had casually said that it would be the first time in history a male-model would be the face of a technology company. A picture-pretty face, not a pimple-covered nerd face.

Everything with Tuna Life was different.

Even the boss.

Andrew rubbed his hands together. They were clammy and sweaty. This wasn’t just outside his comfort zone. This was outside every zone he could ever imagine visiting. He was about to become a public person. He, who had struggled finding the words giving his farewell speech at Avensis Accounting, was going to become a celebrity. He had read somewhere that most people feared public speaking more than death itself. He wasn’t quite there yet. He still preferred to be alive. But he was close.

He needed a drink. “Congratulations team,” he hollered. “I know everyone has worked their ass off for this. Today we can all be proud. Very proud. We have created something the world didn’t know they needed. Today they know.

“Being honest, we should all have been there today, partying in the Big Apple. But as you all know we have lots to do. That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun though. So pack up your things, and let’s head over to the Courthouse Hotel for some drinks. No need to return afterwards. Take the rest of the day off. You all deserve it.”

Andrew knew that most of the staff would return to Frank’s basement after the drinks anyway. It was still early morning in Australia, and Tuna Life’s employees weren’t like Andrew had been in Avensis Accounting; living for his weekends, just waiting to get out of the office on a Friday afternoon. Tuna Life’s employees genuinely loved what they did; they wanted to make a difference.