60

Chapter 59 -- Initial Public Offering (IPO)

The Securities and Exchange Commission requires extensive financial filings in order to go public -- that is, to sell shares of your company on the open market in order to generate capital for dividends, repay loans, expand, or whatever.

We had our inside financial staff and our outside accounting firm prepare the small mountain of data required, and sent that off electronically to the SEC for approval. Our lawyers also made personal appearances to prove we were serious about our Initial Public Offering or IPO. We were asked about a date, and we just said, ASAP. Ultimately, I went to Washington and New York to press the flesh and try to speed things along. Again, I traded on my fame from resolving the Satanic Virus problem.

I guess I was successful. We got the greenlight to hold the IPO the first week of November. Kim and I were ecstatic. The time from application to approval had been just over six months.

Cyber Solutions got the ticker symbol CNSX. We were to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange, the usual place that new high-tech listings were placed. Merrill Lynch was handling the launch of our company into the public domain.

Over the past year the compensation committee of Cyber Solutions had met and doled out shares of relatively worthless stock to the employees and investors of the company. I was a large benefactor of those shares. Since the company was private at that point there was no need to have an accounting of what was done or why.

Kim Stanley was the major investor in CS, and despite recusing herself, since she was on the comp committee, she received the lion's share of the paper stock. She'd put over a $100-million dollars into the company, so that was justified.

I received the next largest distribution of stock in lieu of all but a token paycheck, and then so on down through the ranks of the company. The only requirement for eligibility had to be a one-year tenure with the company. It was funny money at that point. Phil Rothman, the original owner of the company also got a pile of the then nearly worthless shares. Well, they were worthless at the time.

Merrill Lynch and their parent Bank of America had managed the publicity about the IPO. They wanted the public and the institutional investors to know, in no uncertain terms, that the man heading the company about to go public was David Toller, the man who'd conquered the Satanic Virus a year earlier.

I put up with the PR blitz and got a dose of the hero worship all over again. That stuff had calmed down after a few months. Again, I had difficulty going out in public without being recognized, sought after for autographs, or even receiving proposals of marriage from some pretty girl. I liked to dine out, so my fame had become an issue.

The IPO, like many, was going to occur on a Monday. History had shown higher returns with launches on that day of the week compared to any other. Our stock would start trading at eleven a.m., with a starting price of $25 per share. I was hoping for a small run-up to maybe $35 before the closing bell. Even at that, I'd them be a multi-millionaire and a very happy dude.

Kim, Crystal, Carol, Elynn, Cory, Paul, Ross, and I sat in Ross's office watching the electronic data feeds that my father had coming into his place of business. His computer jocks had managed to have a display focusing on only CNSX.

Exactly at eleven o'clock, we saw the 'Asked' price for CNSX stock posted at $25 as the ticker reported on other Bid or Asked trades. Less than a minute later, I saw what I was sure was an error -- a completed sale at $137.50 for a thousand shares.

I looked at Ross and he was grinning broadly. Another completed trade went by at $157, and then another at $164.50. The stock price was rising very quickly. Other trades went by and then there was one for $201.75. Fuck, we'd broken the $200 barrier. That was supposed to be a big deal for tech stocks.

I started pacing and ran into Kim. We hugged. "Is this going the way you thought?" I asked her.

"Fuck no. I thought and hoped we'd get to about $50."

"Why this?"

"Tech is back 'in' right now, plus there's the hero factor for the CEO -- you. If you can solve the Satanic Virus, you must be a good investment."

I rolled my eyes.

By the end of the day, I was nervous wreck. The stock had closed at its peak for its opening day - $248.50.

Ross patted me on the back. "How's it feel to be a real millionaire?"

"Shit. The math was easy, take two million shares of what had been relatively worthless stock and multiply by the closing price. I just became worth just shy of a half-of-a-billion dollars -- 'B' as in BILLION. I was chagrined when I allowed the comp and investment committees to strike a $25 asking price for the IPO; that would mean I was worth $50 million. I'd augured for a lot less. This was TWENTY TIMES that amount.

I was numb. I was nonplussed.

I looked at Kim. She was doing a jig with my father. My father looked very happy. She let him buy some pre-IPO shares, too. The whole family had just become very rich.

Since it was the end of the business day, we all went home. Everyone came over to the house. Ross had bought two cases of very expensive champagne and we toasted the IPO, Cyber Solutions, Kim, and me, and then everyone we could think of.

Ross called Maison Robert and ordered dinner delivered to the house. This was not something they normally did, but he bribed them with a lot of money and they took the bait. We had a splendid five-star meal served by tuxedoed waiters and waitresses a little over an hour later. They sent their chef to our kitchen with all the ingredients, too.

Our (relatively) small group then made love with each other aftere the dinner crew had cleared out. Well, in male-female pairs. And then we took our partners and went to bed. I had Crystal, Carol, Elynn in my bed. Heather had come home late and missed a good part of the celebration. Carol explained to her about the IPO, but didn't go into details about why we were so happy.

The next day, I had the lawyers and my M&A staff complete two mergers that we'd been preparing contingent on the IPO being a success. The two takeovers were friendly and they were announced in the media by Merrill Lynch. Moreover, to everyone's amazement, the stock doubled in price AGAIN! The closing price on day two was $489.75. That pushed my networth up near a billion dollars on paper. Kim was deep into the billions.

I was really worried about the stock being in its own little bubble, and that it would crash and burn at any minute. Shares on the market were in short supply so I sold ten percent of my holdings. That was apparently normal for a 'high flying' IPO. I then had about $100-million in cash by the end of trading. WTF! I thought a $1,000 was a lot of money and now I had 100,000 times that. The numbers were boggling my brain.

Wednesday, the stock settled down slightly, only a few percent, but it did have a few wild swings. Thursday, it went up a tad, and Friday, it seemed to get in synch with the rest of the NASDAQ. The closing price for that week was $624.50.

During the week, I got calls from Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos congratulating me on the remarkable performance of my little tech company. They'd all bought in early. I also got welcomed into the club of the very rich. Of course, Kim knew each of them personally from prior investment dealings.

I flew the rental jet to San Jose for a trip to Silicon Valley to visit Mitron Network Systems, one of the companies we just bought. They were skittish about my presence, but I assured them that they would only see better days -- and I meant that for everyone in the company. I did a Town Meeting in their small cafeteria and everyone in the company attended. The questions were tough, but I made commitments to them that I'd stick by. Alice was with me and took notes. Meg nicely represented the HR packages of the new corporate envelope, and those were better than what they had. I took time to shake hands with most of the people in the company as the head of Mitron made individual introductions to each employee. He nicely gave me a bridge line with each person; for instance, for one woman, he told me, "Marge started working here a week after we went into business -- she has employee number two just after me."

The return trip the private jet took me in through Chicago and a visit to Central State Networking, my other acquisition. They were smaller and more laid back about the impact. My Town Meeting and meet and greet with employees went equally well.

After talking with my board, I contacted Egon Zender, the International head-hunting firm. They found me a COO and also helped me understand the compensation package for such a person. I got a new head of global marketing -- a hot-shot woman recruiting from another tech firm. Slowly, I rebuilt my executive team with a few from the outside and the rest from internal promotions.

The new management team was announced in a corporate press release and the stock went up ten percent and stayed there. I got several impressive national figures for my growing board of directors. As each appointment was announced the stock went up.

Harley Palmer, Lisa's friend was still in college, but I made him my part-time special assistant. He was still a propeller head, so I gave him assignments that didn't fit elsewhere in the growing company, and some of them were pet projects. Harley had some of the pre-IPO stock, so made out well, too; enough to pay for the rest of his education and a new car.

He loved the white hat hacking and I put him to work on our own website. That proved interesting, especially the meeting with my I.T. vice president when Harley showed him our webpage with Lisa lurking, naked and sexy, in part of one of the background pictures. That hole got fixed fast.

Every day there were more viruses plaguing the I.T. world. Their nature was changing. Microsoft had been the target for so many hackers, in part because they were so vulnerable. The company fixed many of the problems with its operating systems and with it, the openness to unwanted software modifications typical of a virus. Apple and other software were ahead of them and doing the same thing.

At the same time, the demand for bandwidth and very high-speed data transfers propelled the importance of networks to unforeseen heights that few companies were ready to cope with. Cyber Solutions, however, was ready and stood out as an industry leader.

One thing stood out to some of the executives in our operations branch was the lack of adequate equipment to cope with the new realities of a networked business.

We had a management retreat at the local college so we wouldn't be disturbed as much. When we were through, CS had decided to go into the manufacturing business. We bought a small electronics manufacturing company that was marginal, and used them as the wedge to get into the equipment market. Now, we weren't just setting up and operating, we were also making the equipment that our customers needed. The stock went up another twenty percent.

Crystal Blue Photography was also thriving. Crystal's division of the company into two parts proved a wise decision. The 'straight' portion -- Gulf Coast Photo Studios -- was thriving. Crystal had hired four photographers and photo editor types for that part of the business. They were handling the portrait work and the weddings that got booked at a growing rate. One of the men, submitted some freelance work that GCPS had backed, and he won all sorts of prestigious award and got a lot of press for the company in the newspaper. That begat more business.

The 'commercial' side of the business was the original Crystal Blue Photography or CBP. Specifically, they were doing the pornography videos and also handling the 'private porn' work. They also helped past customers that wanted to take their 'private porn' work and get it on the Internet.

Crystal had added a separate studio for her 'commercial' work, although she did continue to use the house. The studio had several rooms, and she created an office, classroom, living room, and bedroom setting, and then a space that she adapted on the fly for other videos. Any of the rooms could be changed, but those were the central motifs. She called the place her studio, and it was that. One big advantage was that she could control the lighting and even leave them set up all the time. About half of the 'private porn' work transitioned to the studio; the remainder seemed focused on the client's bedroom.

CPB continued to grow and develop. Crystal and Carol, the partners in the business, had hired Temple and Troy to work as cameramen and video editors. Temple was a superb videographer. They still needed more as the business grew, so three more got added -- Dane Anders, Molly Walters, and Kent Savage. The editing team worked in the new space that CBP had leased.

Dane and Kent were 'off the street' hires that knew video cameras and video editing. Kent had worked with animated video editing for a cartoon firm, but wanted something real and more 'adult'. He got it.

Molly Walters was the same Molly Walters that had been one of Crystal's first 'private porn' clients. She was also a routine attendee at our Saturday parties, often with her cuckold husband Jake. He wasn't that bad, but he did love to see other men plunder his wife, especially me.

Molly did not know about cameras or video editing, but she pleaded with Crystal and Carol, and said she'd work for free. She wanted a job 'in the industry' that she'd come to love so much. She was making commercial videos occasionally, but also wanted a behind the scenes job for the rest of the time.

Molly proved to be a fast study on the software and cameras. Moreover, Troy, Dane, and Kent wanted her to join Temple on the back-office team, that also included Carol. The team had a work ethos develop where they worked like hell for a few hours, and then fucked like hell for an hour, and then repeated over and over. Molly was very desirable, as was Temple and Carol. Molly was also very willing and very horny. She'd go home each day and tell Jake about who'd fucked her, how they'd fucked, and how much she liked it. Sometimes, she'd have a fresh load or two for him to eat from her sodden cunt.

The 'back-office team' would often role play just for their own enjoyment, and use one of Crystal's new studio rooms for their group fuck romp. A favorite was to pretend they were in a school setting and then all the students start to fuck and include the teacher.

In the course of business, Crystal Blue Photography had become the source for videos featuring several major 'home grown' porn stars. These stars were the ones that were in demand, and whose fans scooped up their new videos at full price.

The porn stars in Crystal's stable started with herself. Much like Tara Patrick and Silvia Saige, Crystal was starring in some of her own production videos. She was well known as Crystal Belle, and had a rating in the top two-hundred 'stars'.

Our own Tara was also a favorite in adult circles. She'd started to specialize in 'on-the-job' videos, where, in her videos, she took on dozens of different jobs and ended up getting fucked by one or two men in every one -- office work, construction, package delivery, retail, grocery, hardware, insurance adjuster, policeman, fireman, and so on. She loved it, and all her videos were 'hot' on any market.

Jean Muir or 'J.M.' as her stage name, had taken to doing the kind of videos that were muted, had softer and more artful photography. She rarely did multiple men since there was a high romantic content to her videos. She did like to do F-F-M videos where she and her accomplice would make some man's erotic dreams come true.

Elynn, with her fabulous knockers, also became a staple in the porn market. She'd spent many weekends making films, so had a good following in porn-land. She loved to smother her lovers with her big tits or do a hot tit fuck. Some of her videos were humorous that way. If porn was supposed to be about pretty women with big tits, Elynn was the best representation of that among our stars.

Elynn also knew she'd been 'discovered' at her work, meaning that some, if not all, in the company knew of her weekend profession. Nothing changed and she was always ready to answer any questions about her alternate career. For her serious work, Ross and the two other partners promoted her to junior partner in the firm.

Allison Kirby, with who I'd done 'private porn', had gone commercial early on. She was known as Ally Dee, and her husband loved showing anybody that would watch what his wife was doing. She specialized in cougar and MILF videos, especially since she had a thing for younger men. She'd often done vids with Harley and-or Derek.

Molly Walters, one of CBP's new editors was another 'private porn' client turned commercial star. 'Molly' was more the 'girl-next-door' type that got seduced by whatever workman came through her door. She was often videoed not in the bedroom, but in her kitchen, her garage or even a hot attic, her tool shed, her car, her basement, her utility room, and so on. Molly also liked to specialize in sex toys, so she had also been filmed with a Sybian or a mechanical cock battering her pussy in a solo flick. While Molly liked doing the videos, she liked the behind the scenes work better.

Crystal's key contact for the sale and distribution of the adult videos she made was a man named Matt Volpetti. I hadn't paid much attention to the name the first dozen times I heard it, because I expected that it would change, but the name persisted and I realized his importance to Crystal and her main business stream.

Matt lived in L.A. and also had a pied-à-terre in Las Vegas, two of the hubs in the country for pornographic video production. Crystal had found out more about him over time and their many conversations.

Matt got into the adult industry when he was a student at UCLA. He auditioned for an adult video and was chosen. He was a natural actor and had the kind of control that a male in that industry needed. Theoretically, he could fuck all day and not cum. That made his utility in one video after another very popular. He wasn't 'accident prone' like many other male porn stars who orgasmed and then had to wait an hour or two while they recovered so they could get back to work. With Matt, the cameras never needed to stop on his account.

Matt had that clean-cut collegiate look, that also endeared him to the producers. He had a long-running career in the industry and then became 'over used'. No one wanted to see him in 'one more' adult video. Further, he'd formed a long-term relationship with an industry actress named Tracy Belle. She'd retired from her frontal work in the industry and wanted Matt to also stop performing.

Matt and Tracy remained an item, and he read the writing on the wall at the same time about the rest of his career. What next? What he did know a lot about by that time was the adult video industry. He had a good name, and so built on that to form Adult Distribution Systems or ADS.

Matt handled two major things under the ADS banner. First, he was a one-stop shop for individuals and small producers like Crystal that wanted to get their films to market. He was the filter between the small makers and the big distributors that only wanted to process sure things. He weeded out the chaff. He knew all of the west-coast outlets for pornography, and had the right touch to sell into them. He was a great middleman. If he put forward a video, the serious players came to know it was likely a good one. He'd met Crystal when she went to AVN Expo in Vegas one year.

Matt's other talent was the technology for running websites that hosted a thousand 'stars', 250,000 videos, and millions of pornographic images. He understood networking, and could actually write code as well as physically manage a server farm for a major producer. About half of his work was in this latter category. He also made money teaching staff at the major hubs how to run their back office and technology.