You get a call one afternoon from a mysterious stranger with a job proposition for you. “Salary, options, the whole nine yards,” he says, and convinces you to meet him at a local restaurant. “OK,” you think, “it’s Silicon Valley in the ’90s. Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
A few hours later you’re sitting across from Palo Alto’s version of corporate America: A young guy in brown general-issue Banana Republic-ware, with a red bowtie — a token of his individuality. He stops the conversation every ten minutes to answer his cell phone and jot a few notes into his PalmPilot.
“Call me Bates, Gilbert Bates,” he says. “My company’s got its first round of seed capital and we’re adding a few more players to our team. I know you won’t want to turn this down. We’ve got the hottest product of 1999, and the Street loves us.” He leans forward conspiratorially: “Linux!”
Bates claims to have developed an emulator that will make Linux compatible with both Wintel and the Mac. And on top of that, he’s got a graphical user interface that puts Microsoft to shame. He’s almost through incorporating them into a new version of Linux and expects to sell millions of copies. “It’s the new…
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