Jay

"Dave’s problem was that he was a regular guy from Indianapolis who didn’t lobby or whine or throw his weight around. He thought that he’d inherit the biggest seat in late night on merit: he was clearly a more original talent than Jay, and therefore a more natural heir to Johnny. But that’s not how the business works. Behind that biting sense of humor Dave was an innocent."

"Halpern got straight to the point. ‘I don’t want to waste your time or mine,’ he said, ‘so I’ll tell you exactly what I think. You have two assets: your brand and your back end logistics and fulfilment platform. We aren’t really interested in the brand. But we think we can probably do something with the other bits.’ It was strange. I knew exactly what sort of company Texas Pacific was, but this verdict still surprised me. ‘If we’re to invest,’ Halpern continued, ‘a good chunk of our money is going to go on paying off debts. We’re also going to have to do a lot of restructuring to make a profitable business out of this. You have really good people, young creative people, but most of them are going to have to go. You need to think, can you run this business with fifty people? If we come in, we’ll need to do some radical things.’ It was beginning to sound very nasty indeed, but once again Halpern managed to surprise me. ~ ‘So what I’m saying is that we’ll only do this if you’re prepared to accept a zero valuation.’ Jay was open-mouthed. “Zero? You mean nothing? You’re saying this company is worth nothing?’ ‘Tm saying those are the only terms that we’d accept.’ But he pointed out that the present shareholders could potentially get some return on their investment in a couple of years or so once boo started making money. “You and your shareholders need to be prepared emotionally to deal-with this. If you are, then we can keep talking. ‘If not, there’s no point in taking things any further.’"

"Like Jay, Luke had a clear philosophy about what he wanted from boo. “There are three things this company can offer me,’ he said to me over a drink one night. ‘Power, fame and money. You have all three. That’s OK because you’re the boss. I only want power and money.’ -"

"Once we had finished the letter, Edward, Jay and I stayed on to discuss exactly what our restructuring ‘scenario’ would entail. At some point a banker from J.P. Morgan’s New York office, Alexander Fuchs, who had been involved in putting together the private placement memorandum, stopped by and stayed most of the evening. This was the nearest bankers came to being doctors. I half expected him to be wearing a stethoscope. “You’ve got to get your burn rate right down,’ he advised, ‘and cut your staff by 50 per cent. This is your last chance to get your cost structure in shape.’ His point was that because of the five months’ delay in launching our site, we had a very high burn rate which our early revenues did not support. As it would take some time to ramp up revenues, it was vital in the interim to address this imbalance if we were to avoid scaring investors off."