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that skill to use.
    Dmitri Sustev, VP of Quality Assurance, tells me through Coke-bottle glasses and a thick Bulgarian accent that his job is ‘to make it all very very good, very very solid’.
    Kathleen Rossi, the VP of Human Resources, tells me her job is to make sure Tao is a great place for people to come to work. I think, but do not say aloud, that her job will soon become making
sure that Tao is a great place for people to leave work.
    And David Paris, the elfin VP of Marketing, refuses to answer my question directly, but instead asks if he can take a moment to describe his ‘strategic vision for Tao’. When I say
indeed he can, he rises from his chair, circles the table, and approaches me. At first, I think he’s coming to give me a hug, but at the last moment, he grabs a dry-erase marker from the
whiteboard just behind my head and begins sketching a diagram. By the time he’s done, fifteen minutes later, he has either laid out a startling strategic vision for our company, or he has
sketched a nickel defense for the San Francisco 49ers. In either case, he has managed to convince me that he is worthless, and so I thank him, and shoo him from the room.
    My most important meeting of the morning is with Joan Leggett. Joan is (according to the organizational chart I keep in front of me) ‘Acting Controller’ of Tao Software. Which means
that Joan knows the one critical fact that I must now learn: how much cash is left in the bank.
    Joan Leggett is a petite woman, dressed in one of those sharp Donna Karan outfits that you usually see on ambitious female go-getters on the rise. But the lines etched in her face, her
once-blonde – now grey and mousy – hair, and the freckles that have melted into age spots betray her: the only thing Joan is going and getting is older.
    Joan is the first person I’ve met at Tao who is competent and organized. She greets me crisply, sits down across the table, and slides a packet of information that she has prepared
specifically for this meeting. She walks me through it.
    It’s a twenty-minute business presentation, but – as Joan catalogues the company’s financial problems – it feels more like a two-hour horror movie. The kind of movie
where you want to walk out in the middle and ask for your money back.
    ‘Revenue growth over the past three quarters has been negligible,’ Joan says. ‘We hired a lot of people at the beginning of the year, to get ready for the new product launch.
But the product is late. So now we have the people, and the burn rate, but no product. Which is expensive.’
    ‘How expensive?’
    ‘We’re burning $1.4 million every month. We have $3 million in the bank. No other liquid assets.’
    ‘So we have enough cash for two months,’ I say.
    ‘Seven weeks.’
    The answer, then. Seven weeks of cash. I have seven weeks to turn around Tao. At the end of those seven weeks, I will either succeed, or I will slink back to Silicon Valley, a failure once
again, having proven everyone’s predictions – including my own – correct.
    Joan says, ‘Maybe you can convince our VCs to give us more time.’
    She means I should ask Tad Billups and Bedrock Ventures for more money. I had the same thought, and it lasted approximately five seconds. I could barely convince Tad to pay for my coach flight
on Air Trans. The chance of his sinking another five or ten mil into this shit hole is remote indeed. But I say: ‘Yes, of course that’s always a possibility.’
    ‘Page eight,’ she says. She waits for me to turn to the page. Now I see a pie chart. It’s labelled: ‘Expense by Department’.
    Joan says: ‘Speaking of burn rate, here’s where all the cash goes. Four hundred thousand per month to Engineering. Two to Sales. Three to G&A. Four to Marketing. One to
QA—’
    ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Back up. Four
hundred thousand dollars
each month for
marketing
?’
    Joan looks at me coolly. If she disapproves of this spending, she doesn’t show it.