Three men and a lady

McBride

A friend of mine is the executive assistant for a very active investor, McBride. His angle is “workouts:” he likes investing in tech companies that have fallen on hard times. Not start ups that have flamed out, but solid companies with revenues that have fallen behind the curve or have imploded for one reason or another.

He’s like one of those Real Estate people that specialize in fixer-uppers. He looks for houses with good bones in good locations that are undervalued because nobody wants the hassle and the risk of fixing the problems. He says Tech is a great area for this because everyone is so obsessed with shiny new toys that you can pick companies up for a song just because they are making a lot of money with client-server desktop applications, or some such violation of the laws of Silicon Valley optics.

My friend was flying with him on the corporate jet the other day (fractional ownership, one of the reasons he does well is that he has a good feel for the best trade-offs between time and money). He had one of his buddies on the flight, a guy running a web and database contracting shop.

She calls the buddy “House,” because she says he looks and acts like the fictional Dr. Greg House. Not the brilliant, diagnose any problem thing, but the witty but cutting manner and he likes to wear jeans and sneakers with sports jackets. House is hitching a ride to Chicago and has brought along “Wilson,” one of his long-time employees.

House and Wilson

McBride and House know each other from the golf course. When McBride was serving as the Foundation Chair of one of the country’s most prestigious Modern Art Museums, House’s company built and maintained a lot of the task and contact management systems you need to raise serious money for its newest wing. House’s dad knew the Museum’s managing director, one thing led to another, and now House is on the jet securing an important contract: McBride has analysed one of his portfolio companies, Vogler Technologies, and he isn’t happy with their IT department. He wants House to go in there and build some new systems for them.

After they get those details out of the way, they carouse a bit, and then McBride and my friend buckle down to work on valuations for a potential acquisition. House and Wilson are having a few drinks and arguing about movies.

House goes off about The Good Shepherd. How, he wants to know, is anyone supposed to buy the son’s character: this man, we are supposed to believe, follows his father into the CIA, is a member of the mysterious Skull and Bones fraternity that is loaded with CIA people and politicians, and yet trustingly tells crucial state secrets to his lover in Africa just because she tells him that people in love don’t have secrets from each other?

House is adamant, this makes no sense, especially when Matt Damon’s character, the father, warns his son that she is a spy. Even if he didn’t believe it until that moment, why isn’t there a sudden Sixth Sense moment when everything clicks into place and he realizes he’s been had?

Wilson laughs at House’s naïvité. Of course the son is a dunderhead, Wilson explains. Not in spite of his roots in the agency and the fraternity, but because of them: the point of the movie is that the CIA screw everything up because instead of hiring people based on their competence, they recruit their fraternity buddies and the sons of their fraternity buddies.

This naturally leads to “The Company” being riddled with people who put their own political games ahead of their country’s interests, and those are the ones with any talent for the job. The rest are there because they’re buddies or buddies of buddies. naturally they screwed up the Bay of Pigs, and maybe the whole movie is a commentary on the last decade of US foreign policy.

Wilson laughs loudly, makes a few comments about Angelina Jolie’s attractiveness, and then says they should have put her in charge of the CIA. She raised a son single-handedly, she’s tough, and she would never put a college buddy’s career ahead of her country’s safety.

McBride and my friend keep working while House and Wilson throw back doubles of Scotch. House and Wilson get along well, they both race motorcycles out of the same club and have been trading insults with each other back to their BMX days.

A mission suitable for a lady

The flight lands uneventfully in Chicago, and there is a car waiting for McBride and my friend. They exchange good byes with House and Wilson. My friend knows that McBride has had enough of work for now and is turning his mind to other things. She reads a book quietly.

A few moments before their ride ends, McBride leans forward. He interrupts her reading politely. Did you see The Good Shepherd? My friend has seen it. McBride purses his lips. House, he’s a Good Man. And I trust him. But does House really know his stuff?

My friend hesitates, knowing how close House is to McBride. McBride makes a living reading people’s tells, he waves his hand apologetically.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. McBride is reassuring. But you know the Vogler deal? Of course my friend knows the Vogler deal, they worked ninety hours a week together making it happen.

This work is critical to our success. Find out who is The Best, and make sure I talk to them before we decide anything.

That’s all he has to say.  ¶ 12:13 PM