GINGER/IT INFO

[veryscarylarry]

IT Book proposal by Steve Kemper To: Dan Kois [dan@s*****n.com <mailto:dan@s*****n.com>

] From: Steve Kemper [steve_kemper@****.net <mailto:steve_kemper@****.net>] September 19, 1999

I need your advice. You'll recall I wrote a profile for Smithsonian several years ago about an extraordinary inventor named Dean Kamen. He and I have kept in touch and a couple of months ago he invited me to New Hampshire to hang around his engineers and laboratory in New Hampshire. He showed me his newest product, which he's been working on for a 18 months and told me with a straight face that it was going to change the world. After I signed a confidentiality agreement he showed it to me. I've been vibrating ever since, because-and I know how extreme this sounds-I think this thing is going to change the world. When it hits the market most people in America are going to want one, including you. (Right now the launch is scheduled for mid-2001.)

Everybody in Japan, France, Germany, and Singapore will want one too. The product will be launched world-wide, and Kamen is instantly going to become one of the most famous people on the planet. Soon after that, he'll become one of the richest. Kamen has given me complete access to the process as it goes through its trials and finally comes to market. I've started spending a couple of days a week there. The problem is that I can't tell anyone what the invention is. Kamen is a bit paranoid, which comes from spending millions on development and legitimately concerned that some mega-corporation could muscle him aside if his technology leaks out. I have the feeling Tracy Kidder must have first felt inside Data General in the 1970s when the mini-computer was being built. My question: is there any way to present this mystery that would interest publishers?

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois Date: Sept 25, 1999

Steve, this sounds tremendously exciting but I'm not sure what we can do if you can't tell me or anyone else what it is. Frankly, it's hard to believe that it will "change the world." We've all heard that claim too many times. Can you tell me how Kamen believes it will change the world? Or what aspect of the world it will change? I need something more to go on, and so would a publisher. But if you think this product--is it a product?--is that revolutionary, it may be worth sticking with it. You're clearly very passionate about it. And as soon as you're allowed to tell someone what it is, let me know so I can get to work.

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper Date: November 25, 1999

Dan- Remember the secret project in New Hampshire? I'm knee-deep into it and have two things to report: 1) I'm more convinced than ever that this thing will be Important; and 2) I still can't tell anyone about it, which is killing me. Since I can't do anything about #2, let me give some background to support #1. First, Kamen is no rookie inventor. He's a college drop-out and autodidact who now has a handful of honorary doctorates. His idea of a great read is a physics textbook. He has dozens of prestigious awards for his inventions and his program to excite kids about technology, called FIRST. When people describe him, the word genius comes up quickly. So do "brash," "visionary," and "charismatic." He's 48 and a millionaire many times over, and he's done it the old-fashioned way, by inventing real products. "None of this dot.com bull**** and funny money," he says. He decided early that he would only work on things that would make a real difference, and to this point that has meant medical devices. (The new invention isn't medical.) In his early 20s he invented the first drug infusion pump, which allowed medical personnel to administer drugs at set intervals-the pumps are now standard in every hospital. He also invented the first portable insulin pump (worn on a belt) and the first portable dialysis machine, which liberated diabetics from weekly visits to the hospital (his machine fits under an airline seat). Most recently he invented the iBot, a revolutionary wheelchair featured on Dateline in June 1999. It climbs stairs, goes through sand and gravel, and rises to balance on two wheels.

The response to the Dateline segment overwhelmed the network's website and caused it to crash for the first time ever. Dateline re-ran the story a couple of months later, another first. Kamen's company, DEKA, is creating the iBot for Johnson & Johnson, which has invested nearly $100 million in it. Kamen thinks his new invention-his code name is "Ginger" for now but I sometimes refer to it as simply "IT"--will make all of these look like child's play. I think he's right, and so do the engineers and scientists who've seen it. Kamen, by the way, is a true eccentric, cantankerous and opinionated, a great character. He wears jeans, a denim work shirt, and work boots every day, whether he's meeting with his shop foreman or the President of the United States. He carries little adjustable wrenches and tools in the pockets of his fatigue jacket. His house, which he designed himself, is 32,000 square feet of architectural idiosyncrasy.

The entrance hall is dominated by two two-story flywheels. The basement workshop is full of giant machine tools that he uses to build parts for the dozens of old machines that he restores himself and that decorate his house. There's a hangar for his two helicopters, which he also helped to design; after buying his first Enstrom helicopter he decided he could improve it, so he bought the company and began collecting aviation patents. His engineers (about 170 work for him at the moment) can't keep up with his ideas. He's also the best salesman I've ever seen. When he gives his Ginger spiel to multi-millionaires and billionaires, they're like deer in the headlights. When he starts making the television rounds about Ginger, people are going to want to read more about him.

He likes to say, "If I'm awake, I'm working." His devotion to work and science has made me unworldly in some ways. He certainly knows of Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neill, but most popular culture is a mystery to him. After returning from a White House dinner, he asked friends if they'd ever heard of the two people seated next to him--Shirley Maclaine and Warren Beatty. I'm not making this up. On the other hand, he's on familiar terms with CEOs from many of the Fortune 100. I suspect that he and they will buy thousands of books. (He ordered 10,000 reprints of my Smithsonian article.) Kamen will be the main character in the book, but the engineers who are putting IT together will be a close second. At the moment I'm thinking of it as a mixture of Soul of a New Machine (the development of a revolutionary technology) and The New New Thing (charismatic visionary leader). Title idea: The New Soul of the New New Machine. Hmm, better work on that.

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois Date: December 3, 1999

Steve, it was good to talk to you today. Kamen sounds like a great subject. I wish I had some useful advice to give you, but there's not much I can do if he insists on being so secretive. If you don't mind my asking, aren't you taking an awfully big risk by spending so much time at Kamen's place? He's not paying you, is he? Have you lost your mind or are you really convinced that this will pay off?

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper Date: December 7, 1999

Dan- To answer your pert but sensible question: yes, it's a big risk for me. This is eating up 40 percent of my time and I'm doing it all on the cuff. Kamen wanted to pay me but of course I told him that I'm a journalist, not an employee. I explained that an independent book would be more believable and more interesting because it would be more candid. He understands that. But doing it this way does squeeze me pretty hard financially. Still, I can't see another way of doing it. I have to be up there at least two days a week to keep up with the process of invention and to stay in solid contact with the team members. I've been accepted, I think. They joke that I'm part of the team. And this is the way I love to work-to immerse myself in a subculture for so long that the people get comfortable enough to act truthfully and in character when I'm around. No one looks panicked anymore when I come into a meeting or hover near an informal conference. I'll probably have to recover a little ground after spending the month of January in Bolivia (I have a grant to do an investigation down there), but the truth is that at this point most of the team members want me there because they feel they're involved in something momentous and they're pleased that I'm writing it all down. Most of them have told me that this is the kind of project they've always dreamed about. I love the fact that this world-shaking thing is being invented by a dozen engineers in an old mill building. (Kamen owns a dozen of them along the Merrimack River in Manchester.) To answer the second part of your question, no, I'm not yet insane and wouldn't be investing this much time and effort if I didn't believe that this will pay off handsomely. Kamen's invention is going to sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking. People are going to want to know where it came from, who designed it, and how it happened. I'm getting all that, and I'm the only writer who's getting it. Kamen approached me to write a book because he knew he had invented something incredible and he wanted someone to chronicle the process. But we always get back to the problem of secrecy. I know I'm probably asking for answers that you don't have. I also know how timid publishers have become, and how risky this would sound to them. I wish they could spend a day with Kamen and this team of engineers, see the invention, hear what the investors say.

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois December 20, 1999

Sorry for the delay. I've been swamped, and besides, I'm not sure what to say to you. This is very frustrating. All this dramatic vagueness. Kamen is just too secretive. You act like he invented the wheel. Does he have investors? What do they say? Or is that off-limits too? Give me something concrete to tell publishers. And, by the way, if Kamen is paranoid and secretive, why is he letting you do this book?

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper Date: March 25, 2000

Dan- My turn to apologize. I was gone in January and have been catching up. No, Kamen didn't invent the wheel, but people far smarter than I who have seen IT believe that people will talk about Kamen the way they once talked about Henry Ford. John Doerr thinks Kamen will do for the 21st century what Ford did for the 20th, and he calls Kamen a combination of Ford and Edison. Is Doerr's name familiar to you? This isn't a quiz, but a roundabout way of answering your question about the investors. Anyone who pays attention to Silicon Valley breaks into a sweat at the mention of Doerr, one of the golden boys of the dot.com world. He's a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers, the venture firm that launched Netscape, Amazon.com, Excite, @Home, Heatheon and many others. Everybody wants him, so naturally he's almost impossible to reach. Well, since seeing the invention he's been calling Kamen at least once a day to try to convince him to give KP a bigger share of the new company that the invention will generate. I'll ask Kamen to send me a note about why he's letting me hang around and do the book. I'll also try to get permission from Doerr to show you the e-mail he sent Kamen after seeing the invention and staying up until 4 a.m. talking about it.

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois March 29, 2000

Steve, now we're getting somewhere. I thought I remembered Doerr from Michael Lewis's The New New Thing, and he is mentioned in there quite a bit, but I also checked him out a little more and you're right, he's one of the kings of Silicon Valley. If he's impressed with Kamen's Ginger, I guess I am too. Do you know how much he's putting up? And who are the other investors? And yes, have Kamen explain why you're there and why he thinks this extreme secrecy is necessary. If you get Doerr's OK, I'd like to see that e-mail, too.

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper April 10, 2000

Dan- It's taken a while to sort the investors out, for two reasons. First, Kamen refuses to accept the usual VC terms, which give the investors a huge chunk of the company and a decisive say in how things are run. Kamen wants their money on his terms, and is willing to keep spending his own money until someone gives him the deal he wants. Which leads to the second reason: once an investor group passes the test about terms and Kamen shows them the invention, they get so excited that Kamen's problem becomes how to tactfully spurn people who want to give him millions. Most inventors have to besiege investors. Kamen has the opposite problem. At the moment, he has limited KP to $38 million, about 7 ½ percent of the company. This is the largest single investment KP has ever made, and they've given the new company the highest valuation in their history--$500 million.

They expect the invention to create a company worth $5 billion within five years. And remember, this is happening at a time when venture firms are pulling way back and rarely risking seed money beyond the low single-digit millions. Doerr told Kamen that he was certain he wouldn't see anything in his lifetime as important as the World Wide Web -until he saw IT. Pretty impressive indicators of confidence and impact. Doerr said I could pass along the e-mail he sent the day after seeing IT. Here it is, minus all the address tags: March 12, 2000 Dean Thanks for welcoming Aileen and me to your home Thursday evening. It was amazing, cosmic and therefore somehow extra-terrestrial . . . but of course, very down to earth. . . . A possible next step is for a few more partners to visit Monday evening, or Wednesday evening, or Sunday. Again, thanks--and I don't mean just for the hospitality. Instead, thanks for the scope of your ambition, which is breathtaking, and inspirational. As you can see, Doerr jumped on this very quickly. He did return to New Hampshire just a few days later-he and two other KP partners arrived in two private jets. I'll tell you about other investors next time. Gotta get up to New Hampshire

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois April 12, 2000

OK, you've got me piqued again. I said before that if Doerr is impressed, I'm impressed. If he's putting up nearly $40 million, I guess I'm very impressed. Do you think he would he be willing to talk to publishers in general terms about Kamen and the invention? Who are the other investors?

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper April 21, 2000

Dan- The other major investor, equal to Kleiner Perkins, is the venture arm of Credit Suisse First Boston (There has been some amusing jousting between the bank and Doerr over who gets a bigger share. Kamen the Solomonic divided the shares equally.) Credit Suisse agrees with KP's valuation and expects the new company formed around Kamen's invention to make more money in its first year than any start-up in history. If the financial projections of Doerr and the bank are correct-and these guys aren't known for giddy optimism-in five years Kamen will be worth more than Bill Gates. How's that sound? There's a group of minor investors as well, billionaires and multi-millionaires familiar to readers of the Wall Street Journal who are putting up anywhere from half a mil to several million each. They include Paul Allaire, CEO of Xerox and Vern Loucks, recently retired CEO of Baxter. The total comes to nearly $90 million.

There's one more name associated with the project, and you won't have to research him: Steve Jobs. He's a friend of Doerr's. Doerr wants him to invest in Kamen's new company and serve on the board. When Kamen had to go to the West Coast this spring, Doerr asked him to bring the invention and show it to Jobs. (No risk of an airline breaching confidentiality-Kamen flies his own jet.) When the big moment came at Doerr's compound in Silicon Valley, Jobs didn't want to sign the confidentiality agreement. "No problem," said Kamen. Everybody relaxed. "But he can't see it," Kamen added. "Let's have dinner." Shock and dismay. Eventually, under heavy prodding from Doerr, Jobs signed, saw, and was conquered. Jobs immediately began lobbying Kamen to become the major investor. He wanted to put in $60 million. When Kamen turned him down, Doerr went nuts. You're turning down Steve Jobs? He's a legend. Are you crazy? Kamen wondered if he was making a mistake, but he's adamant about keeping a healthy majority of the new company; he wants control. That's rarely granted by venture capitalists. The first time Doerr heard Kamen's terms, he told him to forget it. "No problem," said Kamen. "I'll just give a bigger piece to Credit Suisse." Doerr folded.

This is extraordinary, by the way. In the cold world of venture capitalism, the moneybags dictate the terms, which always include far more than a pound of flesh. But with Kamen, the VC guys have always surrendered to what they initially viewed as Kamen's outrageous stipulations (keeping majority control, not allowing an IPO for several years, etc.). They've reversed their usual manner of operation for one compelling reason--Kamen is offering something real and nearly finished, not just an idea, and they're convinced it will make them rich. Likewise, Jobs is so eager to be part of this that he has agreed to be patient and serve as an ex officio board member in hopes that Kamen will learn to trust him enough to let him in on the second round of funding. A word of background: Jobs doesn't do this. He doesn't serve on other boards or invest in companies he can't own and run. But he was hoping to take 12 percent of this, if he could get it. Why? Because, he told Kamen, this invention will be as significant as the PC. That's pretty high praise coming from a guy who helped make the PC significant and who's known for his towering ego. I've attached Kamen's explanation about why he's letting me do this and why he's so secretive.

To: Steve Kemper From: Dean Kamen

You asked why I'm trusting you. You seem to be honest, you can hold a confidence, you seem to focus on the right issues, and you're a good writer, as demonstrated by the fact that your Smithsonian article is still the primary piece we send out with publicity for FIRST. Maybe you'll make me look like a fool, but I'm taking the risk of letting you document the project because I think the invention will have a significant impact on the world, so it's important to capture the project's successes, failures, and dead-ends from the points of view of technology, business, regulatory issues, social issues. It just ought to be done. My other motive for letting you hang around is that I hope your book will introduce more people to FIRST and get them enthusiastic about helping us to excite every kid in America about technology. Yes, the project has to remain secret. Like all good inventors, I have to be paranoid. I'm not singling out publishers. Nobody who isn't working on it or isn't an investor is allowed to see it. Some of the newest employees took the job and moved their families to New Hampshire without ever seeing it-but once they do, they don't want to leave. Even many of our key suppliers are still in the dark about what we're doing.

The concept is so new, we need to protect not only the core technology but its implementations. It's going to have a big, broad impact not only on social institutions but on some billion-dollar old-line companies. If these huge organizations get wind of the project, they could use their massive resources to erect obstacles against us or, worse, simply appropriate the technology by assigning hundreds of engineers to catch up to us, and thousands of employees to produce it in their plants. We could be left gagging in their dust. I prefer to hide from the giants for as long as we can. I want to compete on my terms, not theirs, and that means staying secret until we're so far in front of them that we're uncatchable. You asked why I think the product will change the world. I know it sounds grandiose. With all due modesty, I'll stand by the statement. You've seen it, so you know that the technological leap is unlike anything that now exists. We've all seen lots of prototypes and futuristic sketches, but the world has never seen anything like this. New technology doesn't necessarily change the world, of course. Sometimes "innovation" is merely trivial. But this isn't just a better mousetrap. I expect it to profoundly affect our environment and the way people live, worldwide. It will be an alternative to products that are dirty, expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in cities.

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper July 1, 2000

Dan-- I spent Thursday and Friday with Jeff Bezos, multi-billionaire founder of amazon.com. On Wednesday, while they were at a forum in Aspen, Kamen impulsively decided to show IT to Bezos, so they snuck off to Kamen's hotel room. Bezos got so excited that he insisted on coming to visit Kamen in New Hampshire for the next two days. (He's personable and genuine, and he also said I could use his name if it might help get an advance. He's crazy about Kamen, wild about the invention-he wants to invest and be on the board-and he owns the biggest bookstore in the world, so his name and enthusiasm can't hurt.) One piece of bad news: the launch has been delayed until January 2002. The board isn't happy about it, and neither am I, since it pushes back the "reveal date." Unless there's a bad leak, I won't be able to tell anyone what it is until late next summer.

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper August 20, 2000

Dan: Here's a clue. Did you catch John Doerr's comments in the August 14th issue of Fortune? Speaking at the Internet Summit, whose purpose is to hype the Web, Doerr signaled a sharp change in his own direction, saying that he's now enthusiastic about "atoms, not bits." "I'm interested in making things again," he said. "Clean water, transportation, clean power-those are the big markets of the future." Hmm, John, wonder where you got that idea? Best, Steve

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois September 3, 2000

Hey Steve, I saw the big profile of Kamen in this month's WIRED. I noticed the glancing reference to IT... do you have any more news for me? DK

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper November 20, 2000

Dan- As you probably know, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos have been busy dealing with bad news about their companies, so Kamen hasn't heard much from them in recent months. Now John Doerr has set up a meeting of Kamen and some of the Ginger people with them Kamen suspects that the purpose is to give the California contingent a chance to beat on him until he agrees to let them give him millions. Such problems. He'll say no, because he doesn't want to give up any more control. But I'm betting that he's trying to figure out a way to keep these marquee names associated with the project. Kamen is a brilliant technologist, but he's equally adept at sales and marketing. He regularly gives his new high-priced marketing team-whom he calls the Three Mousketeers-a clinic on how to do their jobs. They've quickly developed the usual love/hate relationship with him. As one engineer told me, speaking about Kamen's double-edged charisma, "We're basically a cult." The dynamics are getting complicated there.

Though Kamen will own 85 percent of the new company, it's going to be separate from DEKA, at the insistence of both the board and the people at the new company. Kamen, the benevolent patriarch, seems insulted by this desire for independence. Some people in the new company resent Kamen's need to oversee and control them. People at DEKA also have the perception (mistaken) that people at the new company are getting special treatment and feel superior, hidden away behind their security doors. The tension may not be good for Kamen's companies, but it's good for my book. 60 Minutes II was at DEKA several days this week, taping a piece about him. He has met several times with Noah Wyle, star of ER, who wants to make a movie about him and FIRST. Kamen also heard this week that he's been awarded the National Medal For Technology, the country's highest award for technological innovation. This guy is hot and getting hotter-and people don't even know about his most amazing invention.

To: Steve Kemper From: Dan Kois November 29, 2000

Let me know what happens at the California meeting.

To: Dan Kois From: Steve Kemper December 15, 2000

Well, the meeting began with grenades and continued like a fireworks display. Tim Adams, the CEO of the new company opened by saying, "Before I start the presentation, I'd like to ask you to hold your questions until the end." "Yeah, right," snorted Jeff Bezos. "I can't do that," chimed in Steve Jobs, looking agitated. "What's the point of us even being here if we do that? After Dean left my house yesterday [Kamen spent the afternoon at Jobs', showing him the latest incarnation of Ginger] I was so excited I couldn't sleep, and I stayed up all night thinking about this. I can't just sit here." No, he certainly couldn't. Before Adams completed another full sentence Jobs interrupted and took over the meeting, acting as a bombardier and inquisitor while Doerr vigorously nodded. The subtext was that Doerr doesn't think the new company's CEO and marketing director are sharp enough to guide a new multi-billion-dollar international company, so he lured everyone to San Francisco and unleashed Jobs, who was by turns vicious, brilliant, bombastic, and grossly unfair. Bezos was more diplomatic and cheerful, but still critical. Not very pretty, but very invigorating. Kamen and Credit Suisse's tough representative, Michael Schmertzler, were uncharacteristically quiet, listening for useful information amidst all the roaring. The upshot is that Kamen now feels more certain than ever that he has to ride close herd on the new company, and that's sure to chafe people there.

The drama continues . . . SUMMARY The book will tell the story of an inventor/entrepreneur named Dean Kamen who imagines a revolutionary product and then begins the arduous task of turning his vision into reality. The bumpy path runs from rough prototypes through countless "revs" to final design, and then on to marketing campaigns, manufacturing, consultations with city planners, and a world-wide launch, with pauses along the way to find dedicated engineers, eager venture capitalists, and enthusiastic early-adapters. I want to take the reader into the process of invention and illustrate how complicated and difficult it is to move from an improbable idea to a mass-market product. So it's a business story, but I'll tell it as a story about passionate people on a quest. Or rather many quests, since Kamen's goals sometimes differ from his engineers', which often differ from his investors'. My secondary aim is to communicate the excitement of doing science and engineering, which are too often perceived as boring and nerdy. But the best engineers are as imaginative as any artist, and their work is just as full of passion, battles, failures, and triumphs. The story is compelling on its own merits but gets a tremendous boost from the fact that Kamen's invention, which he nicknamed Ginger, will permeate the public's consciousness and change the way people live.

Ginger isn't important yet obscure, like a new drug, or trivial yet omni-present, like Nike ads. At the top of this summary I called it "revolutionary." You probably didn't notice, since in these days of unrelenting hype the word has lost its power after being applied to everything from diets to razor blades. But Ginger puts the revolution back in revolutionary. Kamen's main quest is to change the world. As ambitious and simple as that. He intends to do this through his inventions, especially Ginger, and through his science-and-engineering program for kids, FIRST. He could make billions of dollars by relegating Ginger to various niche markets-commercial use, the military, entertainment-but he has pushed his investors to accept a wider vision, a world-shaking vision. "Change the world"? I know it sounds like the boasting of a proud father, but some smart people think Kamen is right. John Doerr, demi-god among Silicon Valley venture capitalists, believes Ginger will have an impact similar to the internet's, and has bet nearly $40 million on it. Steve Jobs, of Apple, thinks Ginger is the most important technological invention since the PC. When Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon.com, saw Ginger, he said it would make Kamen Time's Man of the Year. (Maybe it takes one to know one; Bezos won the honor in 1999.) Both Jobs and Bezos wanted to invest millions in Ginger, but so far Kamen has turned down their money, for reasons explained in the e-mails. Here are a few plot points: · Ginger's accidental birth and early development. ·

The team starts to form. Kamen's engineering research and development company, DEKA, can't supply enough people to develop Ginger, which requires bringing in some new outsiders who aren't familiar with DEKA's benevolent dictatorship-grit in the oyster. The revs and iterations begin, along with a willingness to try the craziest ideas. The engineers call this process "frog-kissing," because they're certain that among all the ugly concepts they'll eventually find a prince. · As expenses grow and Kamen realizes the social, political, and profitable implications of Ginger, he begins to seek investors and play poker with them over terms. A parade of venture capitalists and multi-millionaires pass through his offices. · The Dumps. By December 1999 Kamen still hasn't found any investors willing to accept his terms. He stands pat and keeps paying Ginger's growing bills. A couple of projects at DEKA, though promising, also are draining his personal capital (he is DEKA's sole owner), and other projects have failed or stalled. To give DEKA's 160 employees their expected Christmas bonus, he mortgages his multi-million-dollar house, built a few years earlier for cash. · The New Year. Early in 2000 Kamen gets a pledge of funding from the venture arm of Credit Suisse First Boston, on his terms. A month later, John Doerr and his firm, Kleiner-Perkins, pledge another large block of funding, also on Kamen's terms. Much jockeying for position between CSFB and KP, all of it finessed by Kamen's doppelganger and financial brain-trust, Bob Tuttle. Kamen retains ownership of 85 percent of the new company. The entire package, including some miscellaneous millions from a few of Kamen's friends, comes to nearly $90 million. At the same time, many "new economy" companies are failing, and funding has dried up for most new ventures. · Pressure. By summer of 2000, it's clear that the projected launch date of mid-2001 is naively optimistic. Kamen tells Ginger's board of directors that launch will be delayed nine months.

General unhappiness and increased strain. · Ginger is a separate company from DEKA and the team naturally thinks of itself as independent. But Kamen, an old-fashioned industrial patriarch, doesn't see things that way and continues to vet every important decision and many unimportant ones. · Marketing, Manufacturing, Regulatory. Because Ginger will be a world-wide consumer product, and because it's likely to run afoul of existing regulations and/or inspire new ones, Tim Adams, Ginger's CEO, hires experts in the relevant fields. Though Kamen has no experience in any of these fields-he scorns the whole concept of marketing and has always considered manufacturing the dull aftermath of invention-he quickly establishes himself as an intuitive force and the final word in all of these unfamiliar areas. As usual, Kamen inspires and chafes. · West Coast in the Ascendant. Doerr involves some of his friends: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Randy Komisar, and other bigwigs from Oracle and Intuit. Kamen tries to find a way to benefit from their knowledge without surrendering to their egos, fame, and pressure to invest in Ginger. The West Coast contingent tells Kamen that Ginger's top executives lack the vision to launch a revolutionary product and create a world-wide billion-dollar business. Credit Suisse agrees. Kamen, who demands absolute loyalty from his employees and gives it in return, is torn. He leans harder on Ginger's execs, who sometimes argue, sometimes agree, and continue to feel chafed. · The Crunch. The deadline for launch badly stresses the engineering team, which finds itself stretched between engineering the product and interviewing job candidates to fill holes.

The offices are busy before 8:00 a.m., and often still busy at 9:00 p.m. Nevertheless, Kamen thinks the Ginger team is lethargic because of its $90 million bankroll. · Groundbreaking. The manufacturing team, operating under Kamen's command not to stray too far from home, finds a nearby site for the Ginger factory. Experts on manufacturing processes, assembly teamwork, inventory control, and supply chain are hired. · Endless debates among the marketing team about where to launch, how to launch, and how to convince Kamen that their proposed budget really isn't absurd. · (This brings us to the present. Everything from here on is based on the team's future plans and my conjectures.) · Meetings with city planners, regulators, legislators, large commercial companies, and university presidents about how cities, companies, and campuses can be retro-fitted for Ginger. · Mounting stress on the engineering team as the launch deadline looms. Mounting stress on Kamen as the investors press him to replace Ginger's top execs and meet the launch deadline. Mounting stress on Ginger's execs as Kamen pushes them to meet this volatile mix of expectations. · Market testing. Small groups of people are exposed to Ginger, causing several changes in design. · Launch. Publicity. Fame and fortune? Gigantic bust? I've spent two days a week over the last year-and-a-half with Kamen and his engineers, watching them struggle and succeed, struggle and succeed. (Kamen conceived Ginger about five years ago, but serious work didn't begin on it until two years ago, when the current team began assembling.) I have full access to Kamen and the Ginger team. When I'm in New Hampshire, I spend the night at Kamen's house and usually have dinner with him to catch up on everything that's happened in the past week. I also spend time with him in meetings at DEKA and elsewhere. (See SCENE below.)

I'll be traveling to New Hampshire for another year, until the product is launched (scheduled for January 2002). I'll tell the story chronologically because that's the best way to preserve the natural drama in the narrative arc. The book's title will be Ginger's real name (I can't reveal it here because it's too revealing). That name probably will become the name of a category as well as a product (like Kleenex), and a noun as well as a verb (like xerox). It's the name people will recognize and search for on the web and elsewhere, so it would be foolish not to tie my book to it. I expect to begin writing in late 2001 and finish by mid-2002. By the time the book appears in 2003 it will be able to piggyback on the marketing campaign for Ginger and on Kamen's appearances in all sorts of media. By that time he'll also be getting lots of publicity for the launch of the iBot, his wheelchair that goes through sand, up stairs, and rises to balance on two wheels. CHARACTERS Dean Kamen. For reasons the e-mails make clear, Kamen is the driving force behind the story and its main character.

Tim

Adams. CEO of Ginger. Adams took a big gamble when he left Chrysler two years ago to join Ginger, a year before Kamen had financing. He was a star at Chrysler, starting as director of the company's South American operations, then running the New Venture division, a joint venture between Chrysler and Fiat, and Chrysler/Renault. He was given Lamborghini to sell and instead made it profitable again, then was named president of Chrysler Europe. He's in his mid-50s, savvy and decisive, but the first months of working for Kamen gave him a severe shock from which he's still recovering. The two men couldn't be more different. Adams is the product of a huge old-line American corporation, accustomed to commanding hundreds of employees, massaging the bureaucracy, flying first class. Kamen is an impetuous, brilliant lone wolf, self-employed since high school, who scorns memos, watches every dime, and turns apoplectic at the mention of first-class. Kamen took me into his confidence from the first day. After a year of wary circling, Adams did too.

Their two versions of events are sometimes Rashomon-like. Doug Field. Leader of Ginger's engineering design team. Field's undergraduate dream was to work for a big car company, but several years at Ford cured him of that. By his early 30s he wanted something completely different, and found it at DEKA. He worked on the iBot project for a while, where he learned that Kamen's nonstop ingenuity can bog down a team that tries to incorporate all his suggestions. When Kamen entrusted him with Ginger, he thought he'd gone to heaven, and still acts that way despite being horribly overworked. He talks about Ginger the way a young priest talks about religious vocation. He's bookish and boyish, a superb engineer, and a canny manager. He cherry-picked his team of engineers, and it's a tribute to his enthusiasm and persuasiveness that he lured many of them from bigger jobs with bigger salaries in nicer places to a dreary mill town in New Hampshire. He's simultaneously genial and exacting, and his team-well, "adores him" sounds corny but isn't too strong. He holds everyone on the project together with quiet force and integrity. Field is the person most responsible for Ginger's evolving design and engineering.

The machine that the public finally sees will be mostly his, and he feels that responsibility acutely. For him, Ginger is a holy engineering mission. He knows that Kamen is the genius but he is the implementer, and without him Ginger would be years behind schedule. He's the type of manager who puts inspirational quotes on his chalkboard, like this tandem pair: "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."-Pablo Picasso "Real artists ship."-Steve Jobs He knows that part of his job is to manage Kamen, and he's much better at it than his boss, Tim Adams. Bob Tuttle. Kamen's financial guy for 25 years. He does all the heavy negotiating for big deals and is Kamen's most trusted advisor. Though his office is just down the hall from Kamen's and everyone knows who he is, few people at DEKA have ever heard his voice and even fewer have seen him smile. He sits in meetings like a ghost with a poker face, rarely speaking. Kamen jokingly describes him as "silicon-based," but admires his gifts, which seem to shine brightest in adversarial situations. "I've seen him go into a meeting where five lawyers are trying to get things from him," says Kamen, "and we always win." Tuttle is pulling levers at Ginger, but at the moment I only know about a few of them.

I know he thinks that Adams and Mike Ferry, the marketing director, are mediocre, and he evidently pours gas on Kamen's smoldering opinion that the Ginger team is spoiled by too much money. I've been spending more time around Tuttle lately and I'll learn much more about him in the coming year. In December he even smiled at me. The Engineers. I spend much of my time with the Ginger team, and the biggest part of it with the engineers. They won't all be as fully shaped as the main characters, but the readers will know several of them as individuals, and the entire team will function as a sort of technological chorus. The Investors. The two main characters among these are John Doerr (see e-mails) and Michael Schmertzler. Doerr is the big-idea guy, the visionary who sees the forest. Schmertzler is a numbers guy who inventories every tree. He's a managing director of Credit Suisse First Boston, and is considered by everyone at Ginger and DEKA, including Kamen and Tuttle, to be the sharpest mind among the investors. He insists on meeting with Ginger's leadership every six weeks or so to get an update. These meetings are dreaded not only for the time they suck from the schedule but for Schmertzler's burrowing questions. A new wrinkle occurred in mid-December. CSFB merged in the fall with Donaldson, Lufkin, & Jenrette. The political shake-out is almost finished, and it looks like DLJ's venture section will be placed over CSFB's. That evidently puts Schmertzler beneath some 20-something MBA, which Kamen says he won't abide. Kamen is worried because he'll have to find a way to charm and manage CSFB's next representative. But I'm wondering whether Kamen will conceive the following equation: If most of the big investors agree that Adams is not right for CEO, and if Schmertzler is the smartest guy among the investors and will soon want a new job, then . . . The Advisory Board.

Not to be confused with the regular board of directors, this informal group consists of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Randy Komisar, and other West Coast people. It's a high-octane group full of volatile advice that sometimes threatens to blow up Ginger. (See SCENE below.) This group also includes William Sahlman, professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Harvard Business School, who introduced Kamen to Doerr and other investors. The Marketers. At the moment the marketing department consists of three people, including vice president Mike Ferry. They've been at Ginger for nearly a year and I know all of them well, though they haven't actually done much yet because they can't market something that's secret. Still, Kamen never lets them forget that they're collecting plump salaries, and calls them "the three mouseketeers." The joke has grown old, especially to Ferry, who ran marketing for Proctor & Gamble and is accustomed to huge budgets. But he is also accustomed to selling paper towels and toilet paper. I suspect that the investors are right about him--he does seem too corporate, too unimaginative, too slow to introduce this revolutionary piece of technology. The Manufacturing Team. Though this may sound dull, it's full of its own kind of drama. Don Manville, v. p. of manufacturing, has spent the last eight months brokering highly unusual deals with vendors. Whenever possible, Kamen avoids spending any of his or his investors' money. He also insists on keeping Ginger a secret from some vendors, while teasing them with the possibility that they could be getting millions in business within a couple of years, so they should become Ginger's "partners" by absorbing the costs of designing their components.

Big companies with big clients tend to snort at such impertinence. Manville's job has been to work the best possible deals with every major vendor (which takes him frequently to England, France, and elsewhere) under Kamen's hawk-like scrutiny. Kamen is also ruthless at playing vendors off against each other to save money, which has sometimes left Manville flapping in the breeze. Just before Christmas, for instance, while Manville was ironing out the final details of a deal with a large firm in England, Kamen was busy pitting Delphi against another large U. S. company for the same part. This made a mess for Manville. During my next visit I'll find out how it ended. Regulatory Affairs. Another sleepy-sounding heading, but this area could be explosive. One of Kamen's biggest worries is that nervous regulators will impose rules that limit Ginger and stop it from changing the world. That's why Brian Toohey, Ginger's new v. p. for regulatory affairs, may become a major character in the book. Like most of the other players at Ginger he's young, mid-30s. He spent a number of years with Iridium, Motorola's failed $7 billion venture into communications satellites, where his job was to convince regulators in countries around the globe to allow Iridium to operate over their air space. Unlike the company, he was 100 percent successful, and he has contacts throughout regulatory bureaucracies from Washington to Moscow.

In December, after only a month at Ginger, he succeeded in changing the language of a bill pending in the New Jersey legislature that would have made life difficult for Ginger in that state. Kamen and the investors highly approve of Toohey. SCENE [Because of confidentiality I've had to leave out many juicy specifics that will appear in this scene in the book. Please take this for what it is, a quick and partial sketch intended to demonstrate narrative skills.] "Evidently he's always late," said Aileen Lee, John Doerr's assistant. It was almost 8:30, half an hour after the meeting was supposed to start, and everyone in the locked and guarded ballroom was still waiting for Steve Jobs. The meeting, at the Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport, had been Doerr's idea. He wanted Kamen to brainstorm about Ginger with him and his friends, Jobs and Jeff Bezos. The three billionaires only had a couple of hours to spare, so Doerr's request required a very long trip for a very short meeting. Brian Toohey didn't mind. He'd only been at Ginger for a month, as the new vice president of regulatory affairs, and was still dazzled by Kamen's roster of business acquaintances. It was worth some inconvenience to meet these West Coast icons. CEO Tim Adams and vice president of marketing Mike Ferry felt a bit more jaded and exasperated. Hadn't Doerr, Mr. Silicon Valley, ever heard of conference calls and video meetings? Traveling to and from San Francisco was such a waste of time, chopping two days out of a schedule with no fat in it. Adams and Ferry also suspected that Doerr was setting them up for an ambush on his home turf by his heavyweight home boys. All of them knew that people who invest $40 million sometimes need their hands held, need to feel listened to. So Adams, Ferry, and Toohey each had put together a PowerPoint presentation for what Adams called "another dog and pony show."

Their audience, in addition to Jobs and Bezos, would include Bob Tuttle, Kamen's top lieutenant; Michael Schmertzler, representing the $38 million investment of Credit Suisse First Boston; Bill Sahlman, professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Harvard Business School and the yenta who introduced Kamen to Doerr and other investors; and Vern Loucks, recently retired CEO of Baxter Healthcare and a minor investor in Ginger as well as a board member. Kamen, not Doerr, had invited Schmertzler and Loucks-Loucks because he was a trusted old friend, Schmertzler because Kamen didn't want to leave him out of a meeting that might feed the East Coast banker's evergreen suspicion that Doerr was up to something tricky. And he probably was, thought Kamen, but at least this way Schmertzler would be there to see it for himself. Toohey, keyed up, got to the ballroom early to check the audio-visual equipment. By the time the others arrived he had filled the screen with a giant photo of Kamen, wearing jeans and sitting on an iBot in the Oval Office with President Clinton. The picture had been taken a week earlier during what was supposed to be a five-minute photo-op for the president to congratulate Kamen on winning the National Medal of Technology. But Kamen, as usual, had his own agenda. He pushed hard to get more time, and when the White House staff rebuffed him, he asked mutual acquaintances to call Clinton on his behalf. These flanking maneuvers pissed off Clinton's staffers, one of whom called Kamen and told him he could not have more than five minutes, could not engage the president in any discussion whatsoever, and absolutely could not bring an 800 pound machine into the Oval Office.

And as for Kamen's request that the crew of 60 Minutes II, which had been following him around, be allowed to accompany him to the Oval Office, forget it. The next day Kamen rolled up to the White House gate on an iBot, trailed by the 60 Minutes producer and camera-man, and talked his way past the guards by letting them think he was disabled and had permission for the others. (The guards did make him empty the pockets of his fatigue jacket and explain why he was carrying not just a cell phone, camera, and Palm Pilot, but a tape measure, screwdriver, flashlight, electronic distance calculator, collapsible telescope, electrical tape, voltage meter, and, most puzzling of all, a steel machine nut as big as a baseball. All standard equipment for Kamen, who didn't understand the guards' bemusement.) He wheeled into the Oval Office, trailed by 60 Minutes, and proselytized Clinton for fifteen minutes about FIRST, his technology program for kids. When the photographer started shooting, Kamen whipped a folder of propaganda from beneath the iBot's seat and held it in front of the president. And that's how Kamen got everything he wanted into the photo-the president, the iBot, the folder clearly labeled FIRST, plus some footage of the president nodding about FIRST. A publicity two-fer, endlessly re-usable. No wonder the photo showed Kamen smiling so widely as he shook Clinton's hand.

He didn't look quite as pleased today as he pushed a tall hotel luggage carrier into the ballroom. The carrier was heaped with a couple of large black duffels, oddly protuberant, and some taped-up cardboard boxes, including an old Apple computer box. He told the security guard to lock the ballroom doors and not to let anyone in without permission from someone inside. When the doors were locked he opened the duffels and the boxes, removed some components, and used a screwdriver and hex wrenches to assemble two Gingers. He finished in ten minutes, turned one on, and [sorry, blacked out]. Bezos claimed the other one, and his loud honking laugh soon gusted through the ballroom. Kamen surrendered his Ginger to Doerr. He and Bezos were having too much fun to mind Jobs' tardiness. Kamen didn't mind either, for other reasons. He had flown his Citation jet to San Francisco yesterday, carrying the two Gingers. A limo hired by Doerr had whisked him and the machines to Jobs' house, where the two of them spent the afternoon.

Jobs

did most of the talking. Ranting, really. So Kamen more or less knew what Jobs was going to say today and wasn't in a great hurry to have the Ginger guys hear it. The others were so intent on Ginger that they didn't notice Jobs walk in. He was dressed even more casually than Kamen, with sneakers, a black turtleneck, and Levi's with a big hole in the front, where a white pocket poked out. There was a hole in the wallet pocket, too. Within a couple of minutes, after some quick introductions, everyone settled around the big square table. "Good morning to everyone," said Adams, smiling at the front of the table. "Before we start, we'd like to ask you to hold your questions until after each presentation." "Yeah right!" snorted Bezos, followed by that big honking laugh. "Otherwise we might as well not be here," said Jobs. "How long is your presentation?" asked Doerr. "Each pitch is about ten minutes." "I can't do that," said Jobs. "I'm not built that way. So if you want me to leave, I will, but I can't just sit here." Adams stared at Jobs for a moment, then turned to the screen and put up a spec sheet about Metro and Pro, the two Ginger models expected to launch in January 2002. "As you can see," began Adams, "-" "Let's talk about the bigger question," interrupted Jobs. "Why two machines?" "We've talked about that," said Adams, "and we think-" "Because I see a big problem here," said Jobs.

"I was thinking about it all night. I couldn't sleep after Dean came over." He explained his experience with the iMac, how there were four models now but why he had launched with just one color, to give his designers, salespeople and the public an absolute focus. He had waited seven months to introduce the other models. Bezos and Doerr were nodding as he spoke. "If you start with the Metro at less than $2,000 and it's a hit," he continued, "you could come out with the Pro later and charge double for industrial and military uses." Adams's eyebrows shot up and he looked at Kamen, whose face was a mask. "Mike?" said Adams, looking at Ferry for a marketing opinion. "It's a good point," he said, giving his usual soothing, noncommittal, safe response. "What does everyone think about the design?" asked Doerr. "What do you think?" said Jobs to Adams. It was a challenge, not a question. "I think it's coming along," said Adams, "though we expect-" "I think it sucks!" said Jobs. His vehemence made Adams pause. "Why?" he finally asked, a bit stiffly. "It just does." "In what sense?" said Adams, getting his feet back under him. "Give me a clue." "Its shape is not innovative, it's not elegant, it doesn't feel anthropomorphic," said Jobs, ticking off three of his design mantras.

"You have this incredibly innovative machine but it looks very traditional." The last word delivered like a stab. Doug Field would have felt the wound; Jobs was one of his design idols. Kamen's intuition not to bring Field had been right. "There are design firms out there that could come up with things we've never thought of," continued Jobs, "things that would make you **** in your pants." There wasn't much to say to that, so after a pause Adams began again: "Well, let's keep going because we don't have much time today to-" "We do have time," said Doerr curtly. "We're here to get Steve and Jeff's ideas." "The problem at this point is lead time in our design schedule," said Adams. Jobs snapped his head quickly from Doerr on one side to Kamen on the other, as if he'd been slapped. "That's backwards," he said, his voice rising. "Screw the lead times. You don't have a product yet! I know burn rates are important, but you'll only get one shot at this, and if you blow it, it's over." Agitated, he turned to Bezos. "Jeff, what do you think?" "I think we'd do a disservice to the machine if we didn't give a great design firm a chance," said Bezos in a calm, soft voice, trying to lower the volume. "I think Steve is right-that as he so elegantly put it, they could do things that would make us **** in our pants."

Jobs

grunted. After another pause, Adams moved on to the issue of service, like a punch-drunk fighter too foolish to stop. Within two sentences Jobs was on him again. Adams staggered on to his next slide, about the new plant, but again Jobs came at him with a flurry of half-insolent questions. Where are you building a plant? Why are you building a plant? Why are you manufacturing the machine yourselves? Partly, explained Adams, because giving our code to someone else would be a great risk. Not a good reason, in Jobs' view, because the code could easily be reverse engineered. No it couldn't, said Adams. Could, said Jobs, and added that Adams should be spending money and management time on other things, especially since there was no way he could convince any world class manufacturing and procurement people to move to New Hampshire, for gods sake, his tone implying that only slow-witted rubes could bear such a place. Kamen lifted an eyebrow. "We have an adequate staff," said Adams defensively, but it sounded as weak as the pathetic adjective.

Brian

Toohey's presentation was next, on the regulatory obstacles Ginger would face and how he intended to overcome them. Toohey was a big burly man who knew how to boom his voice, which may explain why he got two minutes into his spiel before Jobs began interrupting him. Doerr suggested that instead of going through each slide, everyone "take a study hall and read the deck" that Toohey had handed out, then ask questions. When the study hall ended, Bezos said, "I think this plan is dead on arrival. The USA is too hostile." His idea was to go slow, using one city or country as an experimental station. Once Ginger's benefits were clear, the company would have a wedge to pound into U. S. regulations. The perfect place to begin, thought Bezos, was Singapore. "You only have to convince one guy, the philosopher king, and then you have four million people to test it." Vern Loucks, who'd been quietly watching the fireworks until then, said, "You mean Goh Chok Tong. He's not a king, he's the prime minister. I can get us in to see him if we want to do that," he added casually.

But Jobs was shaking his head. Because of the internet, he said, slow was no longer possible. People would learn about Ginger in a flash of bits and bytes, and would want one now. So a small launch in a foreign place was foolish, because if the machine wasn't available in the U. S., the company would blow its chance for $100 million of free publicity in its biggest market. Plus, Singapore was a nest of pirates, and the company would end up spending a fortune fighting them. If the company wanted a slow, controlled launch, better to start on a handful of U. S. college campuses. "If you show this to Hennessy," Jobs said to Doerr, referring to John L. Hennessy, president of Stanford University and a world-class engineer, "he'll **** in his pants. And if you offer to give him 100 of them if he'll run a safety study and a usage study, that's a done deal in ten minutes. And you do that at ten colleges and maybe at Disney, so people can see them but not buy them." But a slow launch, he warned, was filled with dangers. All it took was one stupid kid at Stanford who hurt himself using a Ginger and then said on-line that the machine sucked, and the company was sunk, because there was no way to control that or counter it. With a big, fast launch, on the other hand, a few malcontents wouldn't be heard above the general hoopla. "I understand the appeal of a slow burn," he concluded, "but personally I'm a big bang guy."

For the first time that day, he smiled. "I think the emphasis of this conversation is wrong," said Bezos. "You have a product so revolutionary you'll have no problem selling it. The question is are people going to be allowed to use it?" By then it was 10:30, and Bezos and Jobs had to leave. As they stood, Kamen got up too. In his natural state he's a volcano that spouts words, but he had been almost silent today, listening to Jobs like everyone else. Now he thanked Jobs and Bezos for coming. "This is the most energetic discussion we've ever had," he added, "and like all good energetic discussions it leaves you with more questions than answers, and leaves you questioning everything you thought you knew." He paused. "And that's good." He meant it. He'd take energetic uncertainty every time over dull self-satisfaction. He sometimes drove his engineers mad, prodding them, prodding them, with his dissatisfaction about some small detail. He could look at almost anything and imagine a better way. This was his gift. It made working for him difficult but exhilarating. Kamen didn't hire drones, but mere brains weren't enough either.

He wanted engineers who thought it was fun to jump off a cliff and design an ingenious new parachute on their way down. Sometimes they crashed, but Kamen didn't hold that against them if they had learned something valuable en route. At DEKA, engineers without the nerve to jump, and to keep jumping, didn't last long. But these aren't qualities that make investors applaud, and uncertainty is not their favorite state. So Kamen wanted to be sure that Doerr and Schmertzler, his major investors, hadn't lost sight of two things through the smoke of Jobs' bombardment. All the talk about small launches at colleges or in foreign cities or among industries worried him. So he reminded them about the serious problems that Ginger could help solve [sorry I can't give specifics here]. "If we really believe that this is a big idea," he said, "then we need to remember that big ideas can make new ways of seeing things. We shouldn't try to put a big idea into a niche." He looked around the table. The first person to speak-surprise!-was Jobs. "I don't worry about the big idea, because if enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen. That's the story of the PC. Nobody had any idea how they would be used, and look what happened." "I think we all agree with the big idea, Dean," said Bezos. "That's why we're here, not to make $3 billion in a niche market." All very nice, thought Kamen, but neither Jobs nor Bezos had a dime invested in Ginger and he hadn't heard from anyone who did, so maybe it was time to throw a bone. "If you wanted to make money on the niche markets, you could always do that, too," he said, patting Schmertzler on the shoulder. "Dean, we've all made plenty of money," said Doerr, sounding offended.

"We're not here for the money. Please retract your statement." How rich. Here was a $38-million investor acting as if money didn't matter, like a gambler lighting his cigar with a $1,000 bill. Kamen smiled and apologized for suggesting that his investors might prefer to make money instead of change the world. Schmertzler moved his eyes from Doerr to Kamen, wearing a look that mixed disbelief with consternation, and implied that changing the world would be nice, but first let's compound our investments. Jobs left but Bezos stayed to discuss Ferry's marketing report. He didn't like it and explained why. [sorry, can't include here]. Aileen Lee, Doerr's assistant, a young Harvard MBA, suddenly spoke up for the first time. Could Ferry state Ginger's "value proposition"? A trendy business school term for "gimme the headline." Lee had made a list of significant new products and each had a clear value proposition. Next to "cell phone," for instance, you could put "allows wireless telephone communication." Next to "fax machine" you could put "allows visual transmission of documents over phone lines." And so on for the PC, the PDA, and other products. What would Ferry put next to Ginger? Ferry seemed flummoxed, and began rambling about the different markets for Ginger.

"Answer her question," said Doerr sharply. "What would you put next to us?" He paused infinitesimally, then bored in again. "You're the marketing guy. You should know." Another tense pause. "I'll answer if you can't." "I think it's a really good question," said Ferry blandly. "And-" Doerr snorted in disgust and shook his head, then looked at Kamen to see if he understood that he had a dunce for a marketing director. Bezos and Doerr had to go, but Doerr still seemed agitated. He had drawn several conclusions from the meeting. First, they needed a value proposition. Second, the launch was indefinitely on hold until they got the product right. Bezos asked Kamen how he felt about that. "I think the design can be fixed with relatively small impact on the launch date," Kamen said carefully. "We get to do something like this so rarely," said Doerr, sounding righteous again. "We shouldn't launch until Steve Jobs wets his pants." "Until he ****s his pants," said Bezos. "It's going to be a messy meeting," said Loucks. "Especially if we all agree with him," said Kamen. Not that Kamen doubted Doerr's noble motives, but he knew that if they missed the launch date, Ginger would need more money, because the burn rate at that point would millions of dollars per month.

Money might not matter to Doerr at the moment, but it always mattered to Kamen, especially in this case. If Ginger needed more funding, Kleiner-Perkins and CSFB would offer it eagerly-for a bigger share of his company. That wasn't going to happen, whether the design sucked or not. He had a lot of things to think through on the long flight home, including damage control among both his staff and his investors. His biggest worry coming out of the meeting wasn't the design or distribution channels or where to launch or regulatory obstacles. He knew that Doerr had considered Adams and Ferry mediocre even before the meeting, and their performance today hadn't done anything to change that opinion. They had seemed out-matched, stodgy, traditional. Only Toohey had done well. His fears were confirmed within a few days by conversations with most of the outsiders from the meeting. Bezos, Jobs, Doerr, Schmertzler, Sahlman-all of them wondered the same thing: why was Kamen letting these guys run this company? "They're buttheads," said the silver-tongued Jobs. "That marketing guy should be selling Kleenex at a discount store in Idaho. And that CEO-where did you find an old-line butthead like him?" Damage control, he thought. Gotta do some damage control.