SOLD: AT FACE VALUE
When we sold the the business in April, 2007, little did I know that it marked the moment that my brother Tyler would secretly establish an ultimately tragic, destructive grudge. A decade after our venture began and the memories of the many adventures ready for us to treasure and reminisce about, it turned out when year after year after year my brother consistently insisted “I don’t care about money”, that in truth, he did care about money —very much.
Then Ookla launched... and another decade of my life was invested in making even more from the great things Speakeasy accomplished on the side of the broadband customer... and you even got paid well in the end now, didn'tcha!?
...but let's go back a bit further; in time before visiting the start of the Dark Ages began...
It was at some point in 1993 when I first contacted my little brother Tyler to explain as best as I could: I had just discovered: the Internet. That discovery changed my life. The call I made to give you the opportunity to be a part of it did too. However for some of us, it is much more profound and awe-inspiring to consider how Speakeasy was an immediate force of positive change for the thousands of people who first got on-line at our humble cafe. Over the next twenty years, what we started ultimately impacted the lives of at least half of a billion people around the world. For the thousands of New York City residents who lost phone, cellular and all other Internet services on 9/11, the Speakeasy's technical approach to broadband and our industry-changing perspective on how to support high-speed Internet and our customers made all the difference for over three days straight: their only way of communicating with loved ones and the outside world.
I remember only that I had to make many separate and subsequent follow-up calls before Tyler finally became convinced enough that the world's very first Internet Cafe was worth a shot, narrowly besting the option of staying Stoned in Spokane, luring under-age girls to his apartment and staring into the nearly empty buckets once filled with the free money our parent’s had been generously provided for the better part of fours years.
While you accepted another five-figure gift of cash from Mom & Dad to establish your share of the equity, Gretchen and I put our life savings on the line. I guess that free money plus living with your newly married brother and his wife rent-free led you to believe you could do whatever the hell you wanted to, company policies and lawsuits be damned... after all you “didn’t care about money... don't even want to have to talk about it, money’s not important..." , and many would say that it showed.
Soon, I was in court defending us against the first case of sexual harassment that you soon brought into our fledging venture ("Stacey, the Barrista”), and we nearly came to blows over it until I stopped it by asking what the hell we were thinking fight each other when we had bigger things to worry about… With this in mind, recall that some ten years later Tyler still claims that “I pushed him first” out at Tonia’s that night, and I officially beg to differ.