Page 81 of Love Is an Art
We enter a conference room. A long, white table sits in the middle with ten office chairs around it. Modern art is interspersed with Popotillo art on the walls. A woman follows us in to ask us what we’d like to drink. We both say coffee. It was an early flight.
“Are you Ana?” Tessa asks. When she nods, Tessa says something in Spanish and then translates for me, “I thanked her for her help with the hotel reservations.”
Ana smiles and leaves.
Tessa turns on her laptop. I take a seat several chairs down. We need some space between us. Roberto sits across from me.
“I have to say, I’m a bit surprised by this visit,” Cameron says as he strides into the room. Cameron is older, in his late fifties, with a full head of white hair. He worked in corporate for hotels for years before deciding to switch careers and go to business school. “It’s not that I have any problem with it, but I thought we covered everything pretty extensively last time.”
“We’re writing up a midyear update on our investments,” I say. “In general, we take an active role with our investments since we’re still a junior player in the venture capital market.” And I’m a junior player on our team, so I need my picks to succeed.
“I’m sure they will be happy with our returns.” Roberto smiles and leans back in his chair. “We’ve already acquired an impressive market share due to our marketing and business model. Your capital infusion allowed us to ramp up quickly, and then some immediate viral successes put our name out there.”
Ana returns with our coffees and then hands out our schedule.
“Here’s our list of the documents we’d like to look at,” Tessa says.
“That’s quite an extensive list.” Roberto frowns. “That may take us some hours to compile.”
“Yes. It will take us some time to review,” Tessa says. “That’s why we’d like to meet with you, Cameron, on Wednesday. But maybe we can talk to Valeria if we have any basic questions. She reports to you in finance, right?”
“I’d like to be there if you talk to Valeria,” Cameron says. “She’s quite busy as well.”
Both men leave, and the head of marketing enters. Liliana radiates competence as she flips through the marketing contracts and shows us the sell-through. The rates are consistent with the comparables I researched. Tessa glances at me and nods.
Next up is software development. The developers are equally impressive. There is a reason why I invested in this company. I’m feeling better about my decision.
Ana drops off a box of documents in response to our requests, and we order lunch from the app. Tessa commends its ease of use.
After Ana leaves the room, I stand and stretch. Tessa stretches, too, and then walks over to look closely at one of the paintings on the wall. It’s an abstract painting of two blue, amorphous shapes layered on top of each other. Tessa snaps a picture of the painting and writes down the artist: Gabriel Rosas Alemán. She also takes a picture of the photograph of a plastic cup of a white drink with letters scrambled like an alphabet soup. “The artist is Ana Bidart. Hopefully, even though this case looks like a jumble now, the answer will reveal itself soon.”
“Are you familiar with these artists?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. But their work is provocative and playful. Miranda and my sister will like them. I do love art. Thankfully, given that both Miranda and my sister are artists. I just can’t do it.”
I don’t answer.Keep the focus on business.
We pull out the folders of documents to review, and keep working through lunch. In the late afternoon, we meet with Pamela, the HR VP. She’s an American woman, probably in her mid-fifties, very professionally put together. It turns out that she worked with Cameron before, and he suggested she move down here as an affordable alternative after she got divorced.
Pamela explains their recruiting and hiring practices. Tessa reviews the organizational chart with her.
“Who meets with the restaurants to see if they want to be included on the app?” Tessa asks.
“There’s an application on the app, and then I meet with them in person to finalize the contracts.”
Not Cameron.
“Is that step needed?” I ask.
Pamela shrugs. “We do want to make sure we’re offering quality choices. Roberto also sometimes meets with them. And Roberto definitely orders from the restaurants listed. We’re all asked to do that. We give each employee a certain monthly budget to order off the app.”
“That’s smart,” Tessa says.
“Employees appreciate it. It’s an employee benefit that has been lauded in recent online forums.”
“I bet the office atmosphere is also lauded. The way you guys decorated it gives such a comfortable vibe,” Tessa says.
That was a smooth transition.
