Forever Yours
©2025 Elder Road Books - Lynnwood WA
Chapter 56: Organizing and Re-organizing
“YOU WANT US to just let them make a religion out of Pythia?” Isobel asked incredulously at the board meeting on Wednesday.
“With a couple of caveats,” Henry explained. “What Rev. Morris does is benign. He asks questions of Pythia and uses her responses as inspiration for his sermons. The preacher who married Lisa and me did the same thing. If Morris’s church has a doctrine, it’s ‘find the right question.’ It brought to light another issue, though. Someone might ask a series of questions and then publish the answers in a book they could call the gospel. That is not what Rev. Morris does. But it could be done. That’s the real threat. Anyone asking the same questions would likely get different answers.”
“What are we going to do about that?” Luke asked.
“I suggest that we remove the ability to either print or copy Pythia’s answers. We have the ability to prevent screen shots, too. I’ll also create a policing AI to install here at corporate. It will track any publication of Pythian sayings and automatically warn the publisher to take it down.”
“We can do that?” Chastity asked, amazed.
“Not yet. It’s not that big a deal,” Henry said. “I’ll hand it off to Conrad.”
“Speaking of which,” Luke said, “we need to get you some management help. Have you been thinking about what you want?”
“Yeah. Chas said something to me the other day regarding needing me to work in the creativity part of the company—generating ideas and new products. The concept spoke to me. Here’s what I’d like to do. I want to split the group. One half will be product release and maintenance. The other half will be research and development. Right now, we’ve got several products in the market and they are getting continued updates. That’s what I call release and maintenance. Then we’ve got a couple of products that have never been released—notably the paver and Alice. I want to expand that group so there is a small cadre who are just thinking up new products we can release. We’re big enough that a research and dev group is supportable. It should also help in our IPO,” Henry said.
“I like the idea,” Dale said. “I assume you’ll take on the R&D group yourself?”
“That’s the idea.”
“And for the release and maintenance?” Luke asked.
“I’ll promote Conrad to director and give that group to him. He’s shown himself as a really good manager. We’re bringing on three new developers a week from Monday. We’ll give Josh to Conrad. They’ve worked together before and Josh is familiar with our released product line. Leonard is strong in robotics and has worked with Dale before. He’ll be a good addition to the paver project. I want Simon on Alice. That project has a lot of technology advances in it, but it’s missing a creative person. Simon will work as a program manager to clean up some of the creative issues.”
“Is that everyone Conrad will need?” Craig asked.
While they didn’t have a vote on corporate matters, the new chief operating officer and the new chief financial officer were still invited to attend board meetings. They were directly affected by the decisions of the board and needed to be heard.
“I think he’ll want to look for a replacement pretty quickly. His promotion will leave a hole and that’s not one that any of our current employees can fill yet,” Henry said.
“Do we have other discussion on the reorg of the technical group?” Luke asked. “If not, let’s move on to the status of the IPO.”
The meeting moved on with the exciting news that the underwriter for the IPO had agreed on a July 31 offering date. The company was going public!
Late Sunday morning, Luke, Isobel, and baby Paul arrived at the row house for Sunday brunch. The four partners and Lisa were all twenty-two years old now. They were bound by marriage, business, and family. Their ties brought them closer together than ever.
“Wow! It’s like we work or live together and hardly ever see each other,” Henry said, greeting Isobel with a kiss and taking baby Paul in his arms. “If I don’t take him now, I’ll never get a chance later,” he laughed.
“You can have him the rest of the weekend. Grace is off,” Isobel said.
“Sorry, grandparents have dibs tomorrow,” Luke said. “You’ll be surrounded.”
“I don’t think I can do a huge party,” Izzy sighed.
“Just your parents and mine and you don’t need to do a thing. We’ll sit by the pool while our mothers fight over the baby,” Luke said. Izzy hugged his arm.
Paul would be three months old in a week and Izzy had lost most of the baby weight at an alarming rate. She looked thin and exhausted. Lisa led her to a comfortable chair and attempted to engage her with small talk about babies and Lisa’s pregnancy. Chastity took the baby from Henry so the two men could go to the kitchen and get food on the table.
“Wow! You made all this?” Luke asked, looking at the frittata Henry pulled from the oven.
Scones were also on the table with assorted spreads. Henry handed Luke a pitcher of orange juice and carried the scones.
“Frittata is quick and easy, according to my mother,” Henry laughed. “I asked for her recipe and she just stared at me. Then she got out a pad of paper and wrote this.”
Henry and Luke returned to the kitchen to look at the note Sylvia had written.
“Cook way too much spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner on Saturday,” Luke read. “Put the leftovers in the big iron skillet, top with eggs and cheese. Bake until solid.”
Luke looked at Henry and then at the skillet full of frittata.
“That’s all? Really?”
“That was the simple version my mother gave me. Then she proceeded to give me a dozen variations verbally and wished me luck. I think it’s going to be pretty good, but I’ve never made it before,” Henry said. “The internet is a marvelous place to find information on cooking things that our parents don’t explain thoroughly.”
“It looks and smells delicious.”
“Here’s hoping!”
They finished putting food on the table and poured coffee for everyone, then called the women to brunch. Izzy actually looked like she was in a better mood from having been with Chastity and Lisa for a while.
“Here’s to years of friendship and family and success,” Henry said, raising his OJ glass. They all took a sip.
“Henry, you left the champagne out of mine!” Izzy said.
“I didn’t single you out, Izzy. I didn’t have champagne. We’ve got some sparkling water if you want a fizz in it,” Henry said.
“You teetotalers,” Isobel sighed. She raised her glass again. “Here’s to all getting rich on July 31st!”
“Maybe it would be better phrased as to a successful IPO,” Luke corrected her.
“If it’s successful, we’ll be rich,” Isobel said.
“Well, that’s only if you sell your stock,” Lisa said.
“Why wouldn’t I sell my stock?” Isobel asked as if the idea of holding it was unfathomable.
“Well, holding the stock is what keeps us in control of the company,” Henry said. “But that comes in two forms. We all have our options that could be cashed in and sold. As of this month, that’s three million shares each. So, you are right, Izzy. If you sell the three million shares at an offering price of $15, you’ll be rich.”
“But you won’t sell yours?” she said.
“The temptation is big. I’ll sell some. As much as we like this row house, we’re already seeing how poorly designed it is for a family. It’s the same thing Ray ran into when he got married and decided not to try to raise a family here. I think we’ll be out looking for a new house this summer. But I don’t think I need $45 million in order to find a nice place to live.”
Isobel was silent for a while as they all took bites of the frittata and commented on how good the food was.
“So, we aren’t going to sell the shares held by our partnership?” Izzy finally asked.
“We haven’t really had a partnership meeting,” Luke said. “I think all told, we have almost 32 million shares held jointly. As Henry said, that’s what keeps us in control. Argos holds 37 million shares, but only has 20 million voting shares. Most of what will be sold in the IPO will be voting shares, so we’ll no longer have a clear majority for the group of us.”
“Will Argos continue to invest?” Chastity asked.
“I doubt it,” Luke said. “They offered venture capital which is a moot point after a public offering. I would expect they will sell their shares during the IPO and take the profit they deserve. They’ve put fifty million into the company and if they sell it all at the offering price, they’ll get over $500 million in return. That’s a jackpot for venture capital and they won’t want to stick around for anything else. However, they’ll still be funding the jointly owned paver project.”
“This is all very fascinating,” Lisa said, reverting to a Cajun drawl. “But can’t we talk about babies now?”
They all laughed, realizing they’d let their brunch with friends turn into a business meeting.
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