Once she was done fiddling with a bit of code she’d been working on, June hung the whiteboard on the only empty wall in their office. Annika put the heinous Hudson Craft firmly out of her mind, and she and June spent the rest of the day brainstorming the one major hurdle Make Up still faced: its financial shortcomings, resulting from the app still being in the prototype phase.

Empty Chinese food containers littered both their desks, and the scent of greasy lo mein hung like a curtain in the air. After an hour or two had passed, the boisterous laughter and yelling from next door had subsided, which made it easier to concentrate.

Annika stretched, feeling her spine crackle and pop. She’d kicked off her shoes, so her toes chafed on the tough industrial carpet as she paced. “All right. So. Scalability—getting OLLI ready to use by anyone anywhere—is still the thorn in our side. It’s the ticket to growth, which is the ticket to money, and we’re just not there yet.”

June regarded the notes on the whiteboard, tapping the end of a red dry-erase marker against her chin. “Yeah. And it’s proving to be a tough one to crack.”

Annika nodded, coming to a stop at the window. People scurried like ants on the sidewalk below in the late-afternoon sunlight. “Right. I know it’s because we’re being ambitious with the tech. This has never been done before, which is precisely why we need to be the ones to do it. We’re going to change the world.”

“We’ll change the world if we ever get to release.” June groaned, scribbling a grumpy face in one corner of the whiteboard. “Prototyping feels like it’ll never end.”

Annika turned from the window to face her. “I know it does. But you know what? We’ll get there.”

June looked up at her and they said together, “Fail forward.” June laughed. “Remember the very first OLLI?”

Annika snorted. “You mean the one we called Troll-y?”

“The iteration that hated everyone! Remember when it told that beta tester that he needed to give up and go home while he was speaking to you? And it told another volunteer that her partner would leave her because she sounded like an ugly narwhal pie? I mean, I know small sample sizes make neural networks weird, but WTF.”

Annika perched on the edge of her desk, careful not to get anywhere near the empty food container. Grease stains were a nightmare to get out. “Don’t remind me.”

“But I will get Make Up—and OLLI—ready for release soon. I promise.”

“I know you will. And if we can get it somewhere close to ready by the time the EPIC pitch contest rolls around in June, we’ll blow them away.”

June whistled. “Angel investors.”