Ignoring the butterflies the size of pterodactyls swooping through my insides, I force my attention back to the man himself. With blue eyes, sandy blond hair, and a boyish smile, he certainly is easy on the eyes.
‘Here’s to hoping,’ I reply brightly, though my smile is more brittle than bright. It’s make or break time. Do or die. Finance my company, you lovely bunch of people, or... or I don’t know what. At this stage, I don’t have a plan B, just a desperate need for a cash injection.
‘You’ll kill it,’ he repeats, my eyes finding his calm, reassuring ones. I nod, and with a deep, fortifying breath, I let my gaze slide left to the bank of windows. Beyond the glass, the sun shines on the city of London, glinting like diamonds from the mass of glass and steel buildings that are glimmering symbols of the wealth in this city.
Wealth I need to get my hands on today.
Even the iconic dome of St Paul’s Cathedral looks brilliant this morning when, in reality, it’s more grimy grey in the daylight. With a final glance at the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, and the Walkie-talkie, I turn back to the room, trying not to smile too much at the ridiculous nicknames these building have been gifted by locals as I feel a kind of affinity or privilege to be in on their jokes.
This is the universe’s payday, I decide.
The sun is shining, I have an amazing business plan, and I’m headed to an appointment with one of the best venture capitalist companies in the country. My pitch is faultless; practised and repeated so often, I can probably recite it in my sleep. I’ve become a devotee of my business plan, and this pitch is my mantra. A mantra I’m about to repeat in front of these dozen good people... and most of them men.
But Iamgoing to kill it.
From the back of the room, Luke gives me a wide smile and a double thumbs up. I nod in response, grateful for his help. Whatever happens after this pitch, I’m pretty certain our friendship will be changing. Deepening. Turning a little more physical, at the very least. It’s kind of become inevitable, and we’ve been dancing around this for a while. But for the need to keep things professional, things might have moved in that direction already. You see, Luke is my college crush. My unrequited crush. We’d reconnected recently, and at first, I was afraid his interest in helping me was a means to get into my panties, which is ironic because, as he takes his seat at the very back of the room, his eyes following the movement of my hands as I smooth the fabric of my skirt over my thighs, I realise I’m more than ready to get to that part.
‘Ms. Welland?’
My gaze glides to the man seated in a Le Corbusier chair at the front of the throng of suits—a wad of suits? A wallet of suits? I’m not sure what the appropriate collective noun should be. Around five foot eight and portly, he’s somewhere in his early fifties with a shock of silver-grey hair. His navy-blue suit is well fitted and doesn’t so much scream wealthy as sneer it imperiously. My mind runs through the company hierarchy, and I pick him out as Mark Jones, the managing partner here. The head honcho and the man to impress.
I take a deep breath and smile in his direction as I prepare to sell the suits on some romance.
Piece of cake.
I depress the button on the remote in my hand, and the smartboard behind me fills instantly with an image of a couple in love. The girl’s golden hair is a mass of curls blowing in the breeze, the dark-haired man smiling lovingly down at her as he pulls a lock free from her cheek. This isn’t a stock photo but an image of my best friend, Reggie, and her one true love, who I helped her find. Ladies and gentlemen, my app works, and you’re looking at the very beginning of my business. But I digress.
‘We’re E-Volve,’ I announce to the quietened room, ‘the socially conscious Tinder.’
My eyes touch on each of the main players before moving to those farther back, making everyone feel involved by spreading the connection. But I hesitate as my gaze lingers on the silhouette of a figure at the far end of the room. Tall and definitely ahewith shoulders that almost fill the space of the open doorway. And though his face is in shadow, I somehow sense he’s staring at me.
No matter, I intone, ignoring the involuntary shiver of awareness that ripples through me. Whoever he is, he’s not part of this pitch and is therefore of no interest to me. I click the remote again, the smartboard changing to an image of the company logo as I begin my pitch with a mildly amusing anecdote from my own online dating experience.
‘It’s two thousand and seventeen. Covent Garden. A girl sits at her desk, staring at her phone at the profile of a man she’d swiped right on the previous weekend. His bio painted a man of diverse interests. A man well-travelled. A man whose profile and social media images were pretty epic. With tattoos and a hipster beard, the man had a retro vibe. The girl was young,’ I add with a small smile. ‘Please try not to judge.’
A tiny ripple of laughter travels through the room.
‘Cut to a couple of weeks later. The girl sits in a coffee shop waiting to meet the man of her dreams when a senior citizen takes the seat opposite and smiles. Thosearen’this own teeth. The girl wonders if the man is a little lost—maybe he has memory problems, and he only thinks he knows her. But then she notices his tattoos. They’re old, sure, and faded, but with a sinking feeling, she realises they’re the same as the guy she’d been speaking with. This man hadn’t used a cool filter on his social media images; he’d used originals. But they weredecadesold. Her date was old enough to be her grandpa.’
The chuckles deepen, and I know I have their interest.
‘This is what we at E-Volve call the realities of online dating. With our app, we connect people not by the lies of retouched profile pictures and inflated bios but by social mapping. And not from our contacts and our friend’s social networks, but of our own.’
This is done using blockchain technology, which I’m not sure I one hundred percent understand myself, hence the need for a developer on staff. I only understand enough to have sunk my inheritance into getting my idea off the ground.
From here, I hit them with the numbers. Lots and lots of lovely numbers that will, no doubt, tickle the pickle of these here finance suits.
‘Tinder has over ten million daily active users; sixty-five percent of them are male and thirty-five percent female. Fifty-two percent are single. Of course, it’s unknown how many of those are shielding the truth in order to attract a temporary mate ...
My own personal statistics tell mehonestandsingledon’t necessarily go together.
‘American singles alone fuel a two-point-five-billion-dollar online dating industry...’
I run through the rest of my business model in three minutes flat—succinct, sexy, and relevant—detailing our customer acquisition strategy, our scaling plans, and ultimately, our exit plan, the part where we make lots of money. Next, I move through the scary part—the so many zeros in the investment numbers I’m seeking. Me. Just me. While I may be using “we” as a pronoun, in actuality, my business is all me.
‘E-Volve is about quality matches,’ I say as I conclude. ‘We’re intentional about the direction of our lives; our careers, our aspirations, our accomplishments. Why leave our love lives to chance?’ I flick the screen to our logo, the one chosen by expensive marketing and focus groups. ‘Find your person; Evolve.’
My heart is beating out of my chest as the suits begin to talk amongst themselves, when I hear the phrase “business-lifestyle model” repeated.
