Page 42 of The Hard Launch

“Fuck,” Trevor says. “So we now just bring in a bunch of contractors who won’t get up to speed in time to contribute?”

“Let me go find Ingrid,” Dave says. “She’s got this.”

“So, a hackathon?” Lacey asks.

“No,” Ingrid says. “I wouldn’t call it that. This is more an off-site crunch to get us to code complete.”

“A hackathon!’ Trevor exclaims. “Sweet.”

I dab him up just to be done with it while Ingrid tells us how it worked when she did this at her last startup: three days at a hotel in Santa Cruz where product and engineering spent a couple hours doing team building on a ropes course followed by intense work sessions in a shared meeting space.

“Did it work?” I ask her.

“We finished the project,” she says carefully, which means the company still went under.

“What do you think?” I ask the team, mostly wondering what Lacey thinks.

“It’s only going to work if everyone commits to going,” she points out. “But I’ll be there.”

“I’m in, dawg,” Trevor says. Dave goes off to get buy-in from the engineering team and the contractors. I send a note to Irina, the introverted AI consultant, who seems willing to come out of her shell for a free stay in Santa Cruz.

We’ll be working nonstop, I message her, in case she’s imagining corndogs on the beach boardwalk.

Am good when working, she replies. I try not to feel closer to her because of this.

I Slack Jonnie and ask her to come down to the conference room, where I have Ingrid give her a summary of what we’re looking to do, and for how many people. I apologize on the tight turnaround that I need on the estimates, but Jonnie’s been working in startups longer than I have. She’s well-versed in last-minute nonsense.

“Three days together at a hotel,” she says. “Sounds like summer camp. I bet you guys will get up to all sort of trouble.”

I look everywhere but at Lacey.

Edmund approves the proposal the next day. Jonnie springs into action, planning transportation, snacks, meals, and activities. I’m not sure how all of us doing the same work in a new location is going to make a difference, but a change of scenery might be nice. Edmund’s been burying me in requests lately, and when I’m being cynical I suspect he’s doing it to keep me out of the code. The question of why he would do that—to help me grow as a leader, or to tank any possibility of a launch?—is a thing I will think about when this is all over. Just a few more weeks.

I have what I thought would be a difficult conversation with Keith. It’s remarkably smooth; he isn’t at all surprised. I get the feeling he’s been through this a couple times before.

Ella extends her stay so she can accompany the team to Santa Cruz. She also moves her home base into my apartment at the behest of our mother, who was threatening to come here and take care of me until we reached this compromise. I love my mother, but right now I do not need her in my home, wondering if I’m sure I wouldn’t like a pork chop.

“She worries,” Ella tells me.

“Too much, and about everything. I made the mistake of telling her my furniture isn’t all attached to the wall and now she’s convinced I’m going to be crushed under my dresser if there’s an earthquake.”

Ella sighs. We’re walking back from lunch, one she made me leave the office for.

“The problem with Mom worrying about unreasonable stuff is that it allows you dismiss they worries that are completely justified.”

I squint in the too-bright sun, which is probably the correct amount of bright to those not spending all their waking hours in an office.

“Is this the part where you tell me that you’re concerned about me, too?”

“I’m always concerned about you. I’m your older sister, it’s my job. Being a founder is a grind, I get it; you’re working your ass off. Like you do with everything. But the last few days, I don’t know. It’s like your spark went out or something. You seem…miserable.”

I shrug. She’s not wrong.

“This company has been my entire life for four years and it might be dying, so isn’t ‘miserable’ the right mode? I’ll be a failed founder. The whole team will be unemployed.”

She grabs my arm and pats it while we walk, and she’s quiet for a moment.

“Would it really be a bad thing if Lacey got a new job?” she asks.