Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Pulse
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY–ONE
- TWENTY–TWO
- TWENTY–THREE
- TWENTY–FOUR
- TWENTY–FIVE
- TWENTY–SIX
- TWENTY–SEVEN
- TWENTY–EIGHT
- TWENTY–NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY–ONE
- THIRTY–TWO
- THIRTY–THREE
- THIRTY–FOUR
- THIRTY–FIVE
- THIRTY–SIX
- THIRTY–SEVEN
- THIRTY–EIGHT
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- RESOURCES
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“It’s easy, Lucy. You want to raise your Pulse, just be seen with me.”
FOURTEEN
SOCIAL PROOF • When investors fund a company based on the prominence of existing investors, i.e., keeping up with the Joneses
MADDIE COULDN’T STOP THINKING about the time her little brother became best friends with a turkey. As tall as baseball bats, wild turkeys roamed the streets of Cambridge like it was a ten-acre farm. Loitering outside the subway station, pecking the glass of the bike shop, meandering down the brick sidewalks in her neighborhood. Where, one day, Danny saw a male with its red triple chin (Maddie later learned it was called a “wattle”) and reddish-brown fan of tail feathers and declared him George, his new best friend, there to play with him after school.
Smiling and steering Danny away from the giant creature, which gave her newfound respect for turkey farmers, Maddie had explained that this was a wild animal and therefore unpredictable. Not a month earlier a wild turkey had chased a girl and her dog down a Cambridge street. Maddie had made Danny promise to never approach one.
“Sure,” he’d said.
The next day, she’d found him trying to feed a turkey popcorn.
She asked why he’d broken his promise.
“Because that wasn’t a wild turkey, it was George.”
Maddie thought Lucy had the same inability to distinguish Ryan Thompson from an ass.
And like those turkeys, Silicon Valley asses ran rampant thanks to a lack of natural predators.
“I’m not signing up for Pulse,” Maddie said, “and I’m not trekking to Sausalito to crash some Pulse loser fest.”
“Pulse-a-palooza,” Lucy corrected.
“Uh-huh. For 10s. What makes you think you can even get in?”
Lucy was checking her phone.
“Lucy?”
“Yes?”
“What makes you think you can get in?”
“Just something Ryan said the other day.”
“Seriously? Is this why you didn’t want an incubator boyfriend? He’s twice your age.”
“He’s not, and it’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
“He’s helping us.” Lucy held up her phone, open to the ValleyStart daily message:
ValleyStart: As we begin Week 3, next week’s beta test should be all you can see. For if you excel, it’s no secret we tell, that your Demo Day may just be child’s play!
“Things are moving fast,” Lucy said. “And Ryan’s giving us advice for Demo Day and—”
“That’s cheating!” Maddie said. “He’s not allowed to do that. I know you like to push the envelope, but I never thought you’d actually break the rules.” She stared past Lucy at the redwood tree in the center of the S on Lucy’s pennant—the school had a tree for a mascot, seriously? “Don’t you think Stanford frowns upon cheaters?”
The color drained from Lucy’s cheeks. “I didn’t trust you with that so you could throw it in my face.”