Viant

"Patrik was silent. I knew what he was thinking. Before Viant had brought us back down to earth, he and I had talked about possibly doubling our valuation in the next round. It wasn’t easy to let that go. Bataillard sensed our hesitation. “You haven’t achieved anything since the last round,’ he said. “Actually, the story is a lot worse. You should be grateful the valuation isn’t falling.’"

"The day before our departure, 4 August, Luke Alvarez and Edward Griffith had met with Viant to hear its verdict on our technology platform. They came up to my desk afterwards. “We need to talk about this somewhere quiet,’ said Edward, his anxious expression hinting at what was to come. So the three.of us went out to the boo coffee shop just a couple of minutes’ walk from the office. ‘OK,’ I said, once we had sat down. “What did they say?’ While Edward concentrated with unusual intensity on stirring the sugar into his coffee, Luke looked at me with a gallows smile. ‘Well, basically, they think we’re fucked,’ he said. ‘Those were the exact words: “You’re fucked.” “What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked, staring at Luke across the table. ‘They don’t think we can launch.’ ‘At all’ I was becoming sceptical. Luke was prone to exaggeration when he wanted to make a point. “What they said,’ Edward interjected, ‘is that we probably can’t launch for quite a while.’ ‘Nine months,’ Luke added. ‘They risus the whole way we’ve gone about building the platform is flawed. They think we should go"