I woke up the next morning with a soft smile. I was very satisfied with my previous evening, despite essentially being teased and not actually having sex. Kissing Janell had been wonderful. But Frank, Aaron, and I had a new problem on our hands. We had $30,000 and no idea what to do with it. We had all mutually agreed the previous night to sleep on it, but sleeping was done. I could hear Aaron typing away furiously for some reason or another and Frank tended to be an early riser. I got up.
After getting ready, I found both of my roommates drinking dark, dark coffee at our kitchen counter. They clearly wanted to be as attentive as possible for the next possible moves.
"So," Frank started, "I got a phone call."
"And?" I said.
"It was from Christiano Morgan," he answered.
"Who's that?" I asked.
"Angel investor," Aaron responded, "worth about $60 million and his company about twenty times that."
I perked up.
"He wants a meeting," Frank said, "but it has to be in New York. That's where his firm is."
"And you're sure it was real?" I asked.
"That's what Aaron's been checking," Frank said, "the actual caller was his secretary. We found her on Linkedin. It checks out. Also made sure his finances were legit. As far as we can tell, they are."
"And the new money pays for our flight," I said, "and we can afford to miss school?"
"For the potential of an investment, hell yes we can," was Aaron's response.
"What about a hotel?" I asked.
"He offered to comp it," Frank said.
"Really?" I responded in near-disbelief.
"Well he has the prospect of making millions off a stake in our company, so one hotel suite is not gonna set him back much," said Frank.
"So," I said, "who's ready to fly to New York?"
* * *
We booked a red eye for that evening and packed quickly. We didn't know how long we'd be staying, so we did so moderately. We packed enough for 3 or 4 days, including our fancy-ish clothes for the meeting (button-ups with dress pants). We woke up with $30,000 and by 8:30 we were in the airport with the prospect of millions.
The three of us were soon on the late flight. I was seated by the window with Aaron to my right in the middle and Frank by the aisle. Frank had elected for headphones and a book, but Aaron was full of nervous energy which made him talkative, which was a problem because I needed to put together a PowerPoint proving to Christiano Morgan that we were worth an investment.
"So, these Wall Street guys, what are they gonna be like?" he asked me.
"Like I know," I responded, "my closest experiences are with other business and finance guys at Stanford. From what I can tell, competitive, wickedly smart, and often times quite narcissistic."
"Do you think we'll fit in?" he asked sheepishly.
"Dude, you coded a high-class porn website for college students. You've done what these Wall Street nerds wish they could have. We'll be just fine. Now, this PowerPoint is not going to make itself, so you're gonna have to be neurotic on your own time."
That shut Aaron up.
We landed the next morning. Frank had slept, but Aaron and I were running purely on coffee and adrenaline. Our meeting was set for that day at 2 PM. We called an Uber and made our way to the hotel. It was 4 stars and close to the financial district, so practical, but not too fancy.
"So, who wants to go shopping?" Aaron asked with glee.
"We've gotta prep for the meeting, dumbass," Frank said, "I know your part is done, but I'm tweaking my portfolio and Mark is putting together a PowerPoint outlining future plans."
"And what are our future plans?" Aaron said.
"For now, the plan is for you to be quiet while Mark does all the talking," Frank answered.
He shut up again.
By 1:30 PM, we were set with our materials and walking towards Wall Street to be early for our meeting. We looked like real business people ambling down a New York street in dapper shirts and pants, even though we were just college students. Finally, we made it to Morgan's building. It was a skyscraper across from a very fancy looking hotel. We stopped in front of the doors and looked up. After acknowledging the magnitude of what was in front of us, we stepped into the building.
The lobby was ornate, with people bustling to and fro and busy looking assistants talking quickly. We spied the elevator and walked towards it like we knew what we were doing. To our surprise, there was an elevator attendant. She looked to be about our age.
"What floor?" she asked in a sweet voice.
"36," I responded coolly. She pressed the button and Frank, Aaron, and I did our best to prep ourselves for a meeting that could change our life.
The doors opened to another immaculate floor, this one filled with the offices of extremely high-level executives. All the offices had glass walls and we could see people talking urgently on phones and typing away at their computers. In the center was our destination, Christiano Morgan's office. It was easily the biggest and we could see him on his phone behind a huge desk. He was in a suit that was surely extremely expensive. We walked towards the office with as much confidence as we could muster.
Soon we reached the door and Morgan saw us. He said a few more words on the phone then hung up. He smiled warmly towards us and waved us in.
"So, you must be the Voyeuristic people!" he said.
"We are," I nodded, smiling back.
"Well, I won't hold you up! I want to hear your proposal!" he said.
I pulled out my flash drive and he immediately called in his secretary to set it up on the tv in the room. I pulled up our first slide.
"So, we have seen growth at about..."
I talked for about 15 minutes about our current success and plans to expand as well as the kind of media we would like to create. Morgan was receptive the whole time, nodding and adding little "hmms" here and there. I outlined our plans to purchase our own photography studio and begin scouting models at college campuses across the country. We would employ more people like Aaron to expand the website, clean it up, and make more content faster. We would employ more photographers and social media experts to give us online presence. Finally, I got to our kicker.
"And finally, a portion of an investment would go towards something that would be recognized nationally. It would instantly become iconic. Phoebe-Cates-in-Fast-Times iconic. We want to start doing nude shoots with celebrities," I said, then looked right at Christiano to gauge a reaction. He sat and thought for a moment.
"You really think a celebrity would go nude?" he asked with his slight accent.
"For the right price. Think about it. Touring, filming, and press are all hard work, but you know what's easy? Getting glammed up for a single day and having some people take pictures of you," I responded.
"And what sort of price tag would you put on this?" Christiano asked.
"We'd lowball them starting at around $100k first, but we'd probably be looking more at the $300k-$500k range once all's said and done, but people would pay good money for these pictures."
"And what stops people from just sharing it with their friends?"
"That's where Aaron comes in. We already have some restrictions on sharing on our website. No screenshots, no downloading, no printing, no sending. Pictures are only available on our website with a payment, similar to OnlyFans."
"And who did you have in mind for your first shoot?"
"We're thinking big, something that will put us on the map, high risk, high reward. We're talking about doing a nude shoot with Ariana Grande," I stated proudly.
Christiano mulled it over for a few seconds.
"Your business plan is solid. Your numbers are impressive, but this celebrity thing is a long shot. I mean, the idea that she would even respond, even for a large number. I mean, it's potential money means nothing to these people with how much they have," he said, almost to himself.
"How much money do you have?" I asked.
"About $65 million," Christiano answered.
"And why are you thinking about investing in our company?"
"Because it might make me more money."
"Exactly. Money always has value, more value than some sort of mystique around nudity," I said, "we're looking for a $10 million investment for a 12% stake. We can have the Ariana Grande content out by the end of the month, plus a springboard on hiring models, techs, and photographers. Once that celebrity issue comes out, we're on top of the world."