Chapter 3

I blocked one hour in my calendar for couples therapy with Dr. Windheim. Outlook paints it in a threatening fire engine red. “Private appointment,” Wednesday from 3 to 4 p.m.

“Private appointment?” Stephan asks almost immediately in the short morning meeting we’ve recently started doing every other day at eight, supposedly to go through the current plan.

“Just a doctor thing.”

“Prostate screening? You’re at that age, my friend. You have to take care of yourself. It goes fast. Straight into a walker.”

“Comedy gold, Stephan.”

It’s not good that Stephan keeps bringing up my age now. This new morning meeting makes me nervous too. Why do I have to go through my damn daily schedule with anyone? Is Stephan trying to monitor me more closely? Does he no longer trust my magic?

Here’s the thing: the super important Series B, our mega fundraising round, is not exactly going great.

Okay. That’s the understatement of the year.

So far, not a single investor has warmed to our story. Not SoftBank, not Sequoia, not even the pathetic High Tech Gründerfonds. Nobody seems interested in algorithms right now. Sustainability and female empowerment are the relevant topics. Artificial intelligence was huge on the hype cycle about two years ago. Now our trend line is swinging dangerously downward.

That’s how tech works.

A few years ago everybody thought super intelligent robots would soon carry us around in their arms, or artificial pets would grin at us when we came home stressed. Welcome to Star Trek.

In reality we’re still fighting the idiotic voice control on Alexa every single day.

Doesn’t look particularly intelligent.

So expectations crash. That’s dangerous. And we have to push the curve back up. After all, our startup burns through a solid five to six million euros every month.

The pressure is real.

And most of it sits on Stephan, who owns the funding round.

“How do we turn this around?” he asks, logically enough, during our call. “Every idea is welcome.”

In the background I can hear dogs barking and Stephan breathing heavily. He’s doing the meeting as a walk and talk. That’s his new thing. Since he started walking around for two or three hours while sitting in calls, he’s already lost three kilos.

He mentions this casually but firmly at every available opportunity.

So basically all the time.

I honestly know nothing about investment rounds. That’s another mega misunderstanding. Just because the corporation used to collect mountains of money from investors doesn’t mean I had anything materially to do with it.

I’m the marketing guy who enjoys nuanced discussions about Pantone colors.

Anyway.

My little performance at Kickdown proved I’m pretty decent when I improvise. So I just start talking.

“Okay, okay, Stephan. Can you hear me? Can you understand me? It’s pretty loud in the background.”

The call now alternates between aggressive dog barking and high pitched screams from children. Plus Stephan’s increasingly rapid breathing.

Maybe he started running and a pack of dogs chased him into a daycare center.

Something like that.

“Fucking park here in Berlin,” he finally shouts into the call. “Nothing but assholes with attack dogs. But I’m listening now. Fully.”

“Okay. Topic one. We’re a fully remote company. So our CO2 footprint is obviously much lower than Siemens or BMW. I mean, basically we don’t have a footprint at all. Apart from the electricity used to charge our laptops and phones.”

“Bullshit, Torben. Nobody buys that.”

“Okay, then we tune the algorithm so it weights equity investments according to sustainability scores. No weapons, no porn, no nuclear power, no fossil fuels. Instead: solar, vegan meat substitutes and…”

“Female founders,” Stephan shouts, suddenly more enthusiastic. “If you menstruate and pamper sea turtles, bingo. You’re the top stock in our portfolio.”

I’m not entirely sure whether Stephan said “pamper” or possibly meant “pimp.” With all the noise in the background it’s hard to tell.

Doesn’t change the core idea.

Personally, I’m just curious how far outside the mainstream Stephan is prepared to go these days.

Then Stephan continues.

“Okay, fine. That’s at least a thought. Now go get the urologist to stick a finger up your ass and feel your prostate, and then we’ll talk again.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Having a urologist stick a finger up your ass is probably the best description of my relationship with Cisco products.

Complicated fuckups. All of them.

Including, obviously, Webex, which Cisco acquired in 2007.

Because our beloved monster corporation has apparently made it its mission to make my professional life significantly harder through the introduction of increasingly complicated password routines.

So three minutes before the call with the couples therapist I realize I have forgotten my Webex password again. The same password that apparently controls the entire Cisco universe.

I can’t log into Webex.

After three failed attempts the empire strikes back and recommends that I call the support center and have my serial number ready.

It is now five minutes past three.

Only then do I remember that during a moment of temporary insanity I once entered all relevant codes and logins into a program called 1Password.

I just have to remember the master password for that app.

It is seven minutes past three when I finally manage to open 1Password because I had saved the access credentials in a Word document.

Old school.

Now I find the password, open Webex, and at ten minutes past three I am so unbelievably ready to rumble.

With Zoom I would have been there on the second.

After Webex then takes an absurd amount of time to actually join the meeting, Dr. Windheim finally materializes on my screen.

A man whose best years are several decades behind him, sitting on a plain chair in front of a sideboard crammed with what appear to be homemade clay figurines.

Unfortunately I can’t make out any details because the therapist is apparently using a laptop from the early nineties with the matching webcam.

Dr. Windheim is trapped inside a fog of polygons and artifacts.

“Mr. Jacobsen,” the doctor begins. “Unfortunately I have to inform you that your wife has already left our conversation. She was not particularly happy with your time management, if I may put it that way.”

“Sorry, sorry, first of all. But I had technical challenges with Webex. A product from the Cisco family which, if I may point this out as someone from the digital industry, is in very few cases suitable for ad hoc use.”

“Mr. Jacobsen…”

“No, I just want to get this out before we start. Sorry. But there are better and far more widely used solutions for online calls today. Zoom, for example. I use it several times every day.”

“Mr. Jacobsen, no one in the last four years of my therapeutic practice with online support has experienced any major problems. From that I conclude that Webex is a solid program.”

I resist pointing out that people tend to call them applications now, and I start pitching as if I’m the damn Director of Sales for Zoom in San Jose.

“Well, with Webex you first have the mandatory account. No password, no party. And then there’s the limited integration with Outlook and other calendar apps. Those are just the first disadvantages of Webex that come to mind.”

“Interesting,” Dr. Windheim says. “What comes to mind when you think about your marriage? Since we happen to be here together. On Webex.”

“Yes, okay, we are on Webex, Dr. Windheim. But I could send you the link to my personal Zoom room here in the chat and then we can continue the session there.”

“No. I don’t see any need for that.”

“Okay. I can do Teams too. Microsoft, obviously, but much more user oriented.”

“Your marriage, Mr. Jacobsen. We should perhaps spend the final fifteen minutes of this session talking about your marriage.”

My marriage.

My God.

What does this ancient couples therapy fossil know about my marriage? About the purity of this connection?

I met my wife in the same year I started at the corporation.

Everything is finally moving in a good new direction, I thought.

After all those years as a freelancer. The constant stress with the tax office. The endless waiting for clients to pay.

Finally employed.

With a mission.

Make German tech brilliant again.

And then my wife.

I never thought a woman that intelligent and beautiful would care about me. I hadn’t deserved any of it.

This was how my life would work from now on: I had stepped away from a world of tangled crossroads and finally arrived on a road with a clear direction.

At last.

Unfortunately, the issue isn’t that fate keeps placing crossroads in front of me.

The issue is that my brain is a crossroads machine.

At every possible turn I see new options.

I don’t want a clear road.

I don’t want to grow old together.

I am Plus Ultra and my wife is pure here and now.

At the core of myself, self doubt rages like lava boiling inside a volcanic crater.

But above that frantic surface of doubt rests the absolute conviction that I am a righteous warrior on a true mission.

Keep moving.

Always.

Step one: I have to defeat Stephan and take control of the startup. I can’t remain some marketing schmuck for the rest of my life.

It has to be bang, bang, bang forward now.

Step two: I have to start having sex again.

Not with my wife.

I’m not interested in replay.

It’s time for reset.

I need to meet someone who takes me further.

Maybe she’s Head of Legal Global at Accenture and I’m Managing Director.

We have wild sex and then go to the gym together and silently forge our bodies doing deadlifts.

I wear AirPods Max. She wears Bose headphones with active noise cancelling.

She tears through books on Blinkist, buys clothes on Farfetch, always moving.

I text her from hotel rooms or send boarding passes on WhatsApp showing seat 1A, followed by a winking emoji.

Never stop.

Move every day.

Rolex Air King.

A business uniform in navy Techmerino.

Rimowa Off White.

Senator status.

Sleepover at the Kempinski Airport Hotel between two red eye flights.

Move fast.

Win.

Become CEO.

There is still time.

But it isn’t endless.

I turn fifty next year.

It is not okay to get that old.

But everyone at the startup thinks I’m forty six because I entered the wrong data during onboarding.

Still, time is working against me.

I have nothing left to waste.

This call is not moving me forward.

It is costing me valuable minutes.

So I adjust the camera mounted above my monitor.

“Wait a second, Dr. Windheim. Something’s wrong with the tech.”

Then I mute the microphone.

Dr. Windheim tries to speak to me, but I point at my ears with a confused expression.

“I can’t hear anything.”

Dr. Windheim shrugs and begins changing settings on his computer.

Then I end the call.

The program closes with a small pop up window.

“How would you rate the quality of this Webex call?”

I select zero stars and submit the review.

Fuck off, Cisco.