Month 3: The Emperor's New Clothes
At our next all-hands, two new men, purportedly there to "observe," appeared at the conference table. One was Kibu's first (not to mention belated) VP of finance and the other was one of our investors (who didn't seem amused by our "most embarrassing story" ritual).
"Girls who get it" was Kibu's slogan, and with these two rational minds on board, I felt as though someone might finally be "getting it." Our new VP of finance convinced our CEO that things like, um, budgets, needed to go into effect immediately. No longer could we cheer on our hologram of a company, oohing and aahing at the emperor's new clothes.
Things began to change: Corporate credit cards were collected. Employees had to account for time out of the office and meet project deadlines. Our CEO even agreed to let Lisa run an offsite retreat with the other VPs to address the Big Issues that she'd dismissed weeks before (the role of the Faces, the target audience, the business model and what Kibu was, exactly). Kibu was in crisis mode, but at least our energy was being focused in the right direction. If we stayed the course, it seemed like Kibu might actually have a chance to succeed.
And then, astonishingly, our CEO eloped. To Bali. Upon her return, we presented the results of our retreat. Later that day, I got an e-mail asking if I could meet with her. I felt optimistic: I assumed she wanted to discuss the changes we'd outlined while she was away. But when I walked into the conference room, I learned that this was "a termination discussion," which meant, apparently, that I was being unhired. Why? The closest I got to an explanation was that I'd never gotten "buy in" from the Faces. Perhaps. But I think the real reason had to do with the fact that she never got buy in from me. I had, after all, violated the most important rule of the dot-com world: I'd said, out loud and in earnest, that the emperor had no clothes.
If you joined a dot-com before the bubble burst this year, you had to pretend that everything was not as it seemed. You couldn't question anything or anyone, no matter how absurd, no matter how good your intentions, because nobody - investors, CEOs, employees - wanted to get off the bus and face reality. Well, the market eventually forced them to, and Kibu, like many other startup casualties, sputtered and ran out of gas this fall - after just five months of operation. (Money wasn't necessarily the main problem; in fact, when Kibu closed, there was plenty of cash left. In a rare move, the founders decided to return the remainder of the $22 million investment capital to the investors.)
I wasn't the only person who'd been unhired at Kibu that day, and when we unhireds did our post-mortem via phone, we couldn't help but burst out laughing. Later though, sipping my Kibu-branded chai energy tea, I reflected on all that I'd learned from my brief dot-com experience: Business models matter. Trust your instincts, not the drunken herd. Create your product before you launch. Bigger isn't necessarily better. Don't place your bets on buzzwords. Hire a solid staff. If you jump on a bus, make sure you know its destination. And finally, when it comes to male genital massage, always err on the side of too much oil.
Lori Gottlieb is a freelance writer and the author of Stick figure: A Diary of My Former Self which has been optioned for film by Martin Scorsese.
