Unprofessional?
Maybe, but it’s a one time thing, so everyone will have to deal.
BecauseIhave to sit with the memory of Noah pulling away.I’mthe one who knows that eventually I’m going to find an answer to all the questions regarding the damn autobiography and will have to face him, ask him for help.
I put him in an impossible situation, and that’s the worst of it all. I’m the one who’s supposed to know better, aren’t I? Older, more experienced in life, yes, but also in business.
Trying to kiss someone you want to do business with is just stupid, and I’m not stupid. I pride myself on my restraint, normally. I enjoy having control of the situation. I’mgoodat it.
So why is it that with Noah nothing ever goes as planned?
I’m never sharp around him. More than anything, I must seem like a mumbling mess to him.
I push it away after making myself a sad breakfast and get to work on answering a few emails, touching base with our PR department especially to make sure the situations that came up last week are being handled.
Then I decide to get away from my computer and print half a dozen proposals.
People send us offers all the time, wanting us to invest in their start-ups. Ninety percent of the time we send our regrets and move on.
Five percent, I put them in contact with other private investors or VCs.
I work with the rest, or at least approach them to begin negotiating terms. Sometimes it doesn’t go beyond that, but at least I try.
My main passion is finding diamonds in the rough and polishing them until they’re so bright no one can ignore them.
There are few things more satisfying than turning a company around and having it be successful.
The best scenario imaginable for me is a company finding so much success that they stop needing Knight-In.
It’s only happened a handful of times, but that’s still the goal.
But another option that’s also extremely satisfying, and the ones that are always easiest to negotiate, are those companies that have found success all on their own, with their founders working tirelessly to make their passions work. When those companies come to me, they need capital to push production into the next step, and that means Knight-In doesn’t need to do much for them.
They’ve found their recipe for success, and I’m just a happy observer who reaps some rewards.
In the stack there are three makeup start-ups, and though I do read through them, there’s nothing that jumps out at me as innovativeanduseful in them—innovation for the sake of innovation isn’t always a good thing—so I discard them and write the emails down on a note so Elsa can send the rejections.
The other three are more varied, a new type of phone case, a valve for home hoses, and a new fabric—patented, which intrigues me—for life rafts and life vests.
I get lost in that proposal, reread it three times before going to my computer to do some rudimentary research.
Midday arrives with a call from Elsa.
We talk through the proposals and then she clues me in to the time of day.
“Would you like me to send lunch to your house?”
I straighten and look at the grandfather clock in the corner of the office, honestly surprised it’s so late already.
“Yes, please.”
I get lost in the SaFab proposal—a name I’m not sold on, but it’s notawful—and again startle in surprise when the doorbell rings.
I take my phone with me to the kitchen, where I eat right from the takeout boxes by the counter, and check my emails.
There’s one from Noah, calling me like a beacon. He must’ve sent it right after I stepped away from my computer.
The subject line is simply “Progress update,” and the humiliation burns bright and hot once more.