Here’s the third installment of my little story, the first and second of which are here and here, respectively. As before, the term “X” is used in place for a certain real name.
Our little company was now under new management. In the months to follow, our respective jobs remained more or less the same, but the interactions within the office grew both peculiar and contrived.
For example, in the arsenal of psychology tools our new owner “X” pulled from his new age bag of tricks, there was something he called “pacing”. During these pacing exercises, everyone in the company would stop whatever they were doing (to the chagrin, I imagine, of customers calling in to place orders or get technical support) and pair off, two by two, and face one another while sitting in chairs. One person would speak, and the other person would “pace” them – – that is to say, the silent person would mimic the body language of the other party. This was not to be done in a mocking way, but instead was assumed to build empathy with the other person.
There were unintended consequences to this interaction, however. For example, one of the employees in the office was a man named Jay who referred to himself as Jaime and wanted very badly to be a woman instead of a man. He dressed the part, painted his nails, spoke in a feminine voice, and grew his hair long. He even used the women’s restroom, which become a point of contention with the couple of women who also worked at Technical Tools.
Poor Jaime had the misfortune one day of being paired off with Rick, who didn’t care for Jaime’s gender explorations in the least. As Jaime sat quietly, Rick laid out in exhaustive detail how offensive he considered Jaime’s behavior, how he objected to his “lifestyle”, and, in general, how grossed-out he was by everything Jaime represented. These kinds of interactions did more to promote antipathy than empathy.
Such antics were not confined to the office, however, X had become very enamored with Robert Bly and his bestselling book Iron John: A Book About Men. For whatever personal reasons, X was very gung-ho about the men’s movement. I only have vague recollections of the materials he gathered together, but I do recall references to “the blood milk” and a sentence offered in a newsletter stating that X was “beating [his] drum, calling you, calling you.” My interest in drums, self-referential white men, or blood milk was too low to be measurable.
On My Ear
Through late 1991 and early 1992, relationships began to fray and splinter in the company, and X’s disposition to the employees began to darken. One by one, we began to get fired. One evening, I had enjoyed a nice dinner with my co-worker Gibbons, going out on a double date – he with his girlfriend, and I with my wife. When we all returned to his apartment, the light on the answering machine was flashing. He pressed Play, and the brief message was, “Gibbons, this is X. I got your little message, and you’re fired.”
The “little message” was a business suggestion Gibbons had submitted, but X was unimpressed by it, and he wound up firing my friend via answering machine. Gibbons took the news with good humor, since he knew his days were numbered at the company, just like the rest of us. I suppose I took some pride in managing to survive as long as I did.
I knew the end was near when X hired a friend of his to do various tasks at the firm, including check out the work of “our supposed marketing guy.” It was evident to me this newcomer was my replacement, and while sitting at my desk, X throw down the catalog I had made and said, “I’ll pay you $100 for every error you find in there!” I wasn’t going to take up this offer to humiliate myself for cash, so I went in to have a talk with him. I’ll keep the content of that conversation to myself. Suffice it to say I was more convinced than ever never to work for someone else again.
We agreed that it was time for me to go, and he promised that in a few days I could contact them back and find out what my severance package was. It was modest – maybe a week or two of pay – but I was once again out of a job with no clear idea what to do next.
Prophet is Born
As incredible as it may seem, soon after I got fired, my home phone rang, and it was Andy Behctolsheim on the other line. He had somehow divined from one of the guys at his little trading outfit that I was disenchanted with work and wouldn’t mind starting my own business. Andy wanted to work very closely with someone for his data needs, and he correctly figured that he would get a lot more attention from a firm that he funded.
I excitedly called Rick, whom had been fired around the same time I had been, and told him we had an incredible opportunity to start our own business. Rick was instantly interested, particularly considering that Andy was ready to provide the financial backing, so the three of us got together to work out the details.
Compared to the nine-figure funding rounds of the current environment, Prophet’s starting capital in 1992 was a laughable $3,000, chipped in via equal parts from me, Rick, and Andy. Thus, we were equal partners, each with a third, of our new enterprise, with Andy providing a $100,000 minimum-interest loan to help us get on or feet.
Just like having a baby, one of the first tasks in the formation of a new company is to come up with a name. Our competitors had names such as CSI, Technical Tools, and Genesis, so clearly our industry didn’t sport ingenious and clever monikers. Andy tried his hand at coming up with some suggestions, but his engineering genius definitely did not lend itself to naming skills, as he proffered “Quotes Plus” and “DataTek”.
I was strolling through Lytton Plaza, in downtown Palo Alto, when a name popped into my head that I instantly loved: Prophet. It had a lot going for it. It was short, easy to remember, and its seven characters appealed to my superstitious need for luck. It also has a clever double entendre, suggesting both money and the ability to see in the future. So, Prophet it was.
The interesting thing about the name occurring to me at that particular spot was that, six years later, two other entrepreneurs found themselves in that exact location for a somewhat similar reason. That morning, they had met for the first time with Andy Bechtolsheim to get their own $100,000 check for their new venture. When Andy asked to whom the check should be written, they told him their idea for the name, so he wrote “Google” on the check’s first line. The two young men – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – didn’t even have a checking account open yet, so they shoved the check in a wallet and dashed off to Lytton Square to enjoy a Burger King breakfast meal and celebrate their newfound funding.
Returning to our own story, however, in June 1992, Prophet had a name, an engineer, a business guy, and some funding. Our incorporation date was July 1, 1992, and we rented a cozy office on the second floor of 182 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, overlooking the same Lytton Plaza where the name had struck. It was invigorating, because we both felt a great sense of control over our own destiny, and we both wanted to beat the company that fired us at its own game. Prophet had begun.
