Escape Pod has just podcast an audio version of my short story “Other People’s Money,” which originally appeared in the Forbes “future of work” issue:
Which is why she was hoping that the venture capitalist would just leave her alone. He wasn’t a paying customer, he wasn’t a fellow artist – he wanted to buy her, and he was thirty years too late.
“You know, I pitched you guys in 1999. On Sand Hill Road. One of the founding partners. Kleiner, I think. The guy ate a salad all through my slide-deck. When I was done, he wiped his mouth, looked over my shoulder, and told me he didn’t think I’d scale. That was it. He didn’t even pick up my business card. When I looked back as I was going out the door, I saw his sweep it into the trash with the wrapper from his sandwich.”
The VC – young, with the waxy, sweaty look of someone who ate a lot of GM yogurt to try to patch his biochemistry – shook his head. “That wasn’t us. We’re a franchise – based here in LA. I just opened up the Inglewood branch. But I can see how that would have soured you on us. Did you ever get your VC?”
See also: Other People’s Money: My Forbes story on the future of work