The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living Read Online Free

spin-ins, what have you. I'm not in the phone book or listed in any professional directory. If you don't know someone I know, you can't find me.
    I wonder what Frank had in mind when he set me up with Lenny. I prefer to riff on ideas, brainstorm, prod and provoke, have some constructive give-and-take around a business concept. It didn't feel like there was going to be much of that with Lenny. I gazed out the picture window at the bright California day, the eucalyptus trees rustling in the breeze.
    “Before you get started, Lenny, tell me how you know Frank,” I said.
    “He's, uh, a friend of a friend. We presented to him Monday, and he sounded interested. He wanted us to meet with you right away.”
    Sounds like the early bird special, a quick chat before Frank and his partners hold their weekly gathering to talk shop and audition new deals. Obviously Lenny didn't know Frank at all. Thanks, Frank. You owe me.
    Frank is a headliner in the VC world, whom I've known since I raised money for GO. His firm is “top tier,” a term reserved for firms with such a long wake of winners that the mere mention of their names imparts instant credibility and a whiff of inevitability to a startup. We stay in touch. A few days ago he'd called to say he was sending me a prospect. “Intense guy,” he confided, “unusual idea but may be ‘interesting’. If you like it perhaps we can work together on this one.”
    “What do you do, Lenny?”
    “I sell group life insurance to companies, part of the employee benefit package. National accounts. So I'm out to the West Coast every two or three weeks. I'm the company leader in new sales the last two years. Millions of dollars in value.”
    Lenny paused a split second and slid some kind of legal document across the table.
    “I brought along an NDA. Could you please sign it before I go on.” For a second his supreme confidence faltered.
    Without a glance, I pushed it back at Lenny.
    “I see dozens of companies each month, Lenny. I can't sign a confidentiality agreement. It exposes me to inadvertent liability. My integrity is my stock in trade. If Frank referred you, he can vouch for me. If you're uncomfortable with that, don't tell me anything you think is a trade secret. Frank didn't sign your NDA, did he?”
    “Ah, no. I just thought …” Lenny said, skidding for a split second. “OK. Let me start.”
    He flipped open the binder. It was a professional presentation, the kind you see in boardrooms all the time. From his pocket he extracted an extendable pointer. He pulled it out a few inches and tapped at the title page.
    “We want to call this business ‘Funerals.com,’ but some undertaker in Oklahoma already has the URL,” he said. “When we get funding we'll buy the rights to the name.”
    Funerals.com. Oh, brother. What next?
    “I understand,” I said. Below the title were the date and the words “Presentation to Randy Komisar.” He would probably read aloud all the words to me.
    “Presentation to Randy Komisar.”
    “You don't need to read it to me, Lenny,” I said. “Just tell me about it.”
    “Sure, if that's what you'd prefer.” He flipped to a page that proclaimed, in a blaze of black type: “The Amazon.com of the Funeral Goods Business.”
    Now that's a new one.
    “This window of opportunity is going to close soon, but if we act now, we can make this the Amazon of the funeral business,” Lenny began. “It's going to be big. The world is moving to the Internet—I'll explain that in a minute —and these products will move there too. The Internet's changing the way we live, and it will change the way people die. Someone's going to ride this opportunity all the way to the bank”—or the pearly gates, I said to myself— “and we think we should be the ones.”
    Next page: “Projected Revenues.”
    “In the first full year after we're up and running, we expect $10 million in revenue. Fifty million the second year. The third year we really hit our stride