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he refused to acknowledge that he’d taken my pen and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Despite the loss of the Mont Blanc, I still thought we’d had a clear win, until Annamaria reminded me that it had cost the company nearly seventy thousand dollars. But life went on. Without Steve to hinder her, Annamaria restarted her sales efforts and within days orders began to trickle in again. One afternoon, a reviewer actually showed up at our door, right on time for his appointment and excited at the prospect of being the first of his tribe to get a crack at writing about our product.
Organically, as a company, we all felt that a huge win was in sight. When Steve was hitting us over our collective heads with his cheerleading, it was imposed on us, and deep down none of us really believed it. Now, though, we could actually feel and see it happen. We were going for the big one. Nobody in Silicon Valley ever went for a good job or a nice little business. If you weren’t trying to hit a home run right out of the park, you weren’t in the game. Now, as the orders began to roll in and the reviewers gave us the nod, now we knew we were players.
When we began to get calls, and then orders, from major companies who’d heard of our product, the dollars began to roll in. Then, some of the large chain store buyers began to call, as word of our product got around.
I promoted Annamaria to Marketing Manager, doubled her salary and gave her a whack of stock options. We were headed for a public offering and I wanted to make sure she got her share. The promotion and the raise didn’t require board approval, although, afterward, I felt it was my duty to mention it in a board meeting.
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