“Harassment, absolutely not. But giving a man the benefit of the doubt, not pouncing on everything he says, so that he takes you into his confidence, yes.”
Manishala leans back, rolls her eyes. I sense that the audience of women like me, founders and wannabe founders, are on the fence. They want to agree with Manishala. They want to say “fuck you” every time some guy uses a woman’s body as a way of describing something—We’re already pregnant, let’s just push this thing out or: Should we open the full kimono?—but they know they’re going to walk into that office or that pitch meeting, and they’re going to feel like they have to bro it up with all the other guys, because who wants to be the uptight girl who makes everyone shush the minute she walks into the room? We want to be on the inside, we want to hang. We want to be cool. And we want to win.
Manishala is talking about how she started A Friend in Need, a fintech company focused on lending money to women. She tells us no one would fund her until a female VC stepped up and saw the opportunity. “We have to back each other,” she says. “Not because we’re being nice or because of the sisterhood. We have to back each other because we see things—financial opportunities—that men don’t. My company is worth two hundred million dollars, and I have made money for the woman who bet on me. No one gets to tell her she did me a favor, she just valued the investment on different terms.”
The crowd cheers. We see ourselves on that stage, each one of us, hoping we’re going to defy the odds. And for the first time, I feel a little pang of regret. Why didn’t I front the WAI? Why did I wed my idea to a man and push him to take center stage when I was the one who stayed up nights making it a reality? It wasn’t Cyrus’s fault—at least not initially—that I couldn’t have imagined putting myself out there and saying, This thing is real. Back me. Now it’s too late—the cult of Cyrus has begun, and although I have a seat at the table, it isn’t my table, it’s his. His and Rupert’s and all the other men who are going to fund the business.
Destiny shoulder-bumps me. I look over and I see that her eyes are shining because Manishala has put the same fire into her as she has into me, and she’s thinking about Consentify.
After it’s all over, I grab Destiny’s hand and push us to the edge of the stage. The speakers are gathering their things, taking off their mikes. “Ms. Brown?” I say. She looks up, smiles. “You can call me Manishala,” she says, though I can tell she liked that I didn’t presume to use her first name.
“This is my friend Destiny. She had an idea, but like you, she hasn’t found funding.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She fumbles with her handbag. She’s heard a thousand sob stories.
“It’s technically sound,” I say. “But the narrative didn’t sit well with most investors. I can vouch for it—I programmed the algorithm that powers WAI.”
“You built WAI? You’re Asha Ray?”
It has only just started happening to me, that thing where people I have never met have an opinion of me based on things they’ve read or heard. Six months ago I never would’ve approached Manishala, and she never would have given me that look she’s giving me now, like I’m a person to notice and be reckoned with. I earned that. I give myself a silent high five.
“So what’s this thing?” she asks.
Destiny explains. “It’s called Consentify. It allows partners to pre-agree to their sexual activity.”
Manishala laughs. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.”
Destiny hands over her phone. Manishala swipes, scrolls, presses a few buttons. “Interesting.” She clicks open her bag, takes out a business card. “I’m not making any promises,” she says. “But send me your deck and I will take a look.”
* * *
Cyrus, Ren, and Destiny are crowded around a screen. Cyrus is pointing and gesturing. I haven’t been called in, but I can see through the glass that there are moments of conversation and then long periods when no one is saying anything. Cyrus has his own office now, a glassed-in section on the fourth floor. We’ve talked about moving—Utopia is an incubator, and WAI’s incubation is definitely over. But Cyrus wants to stay, and he convinces Li Ann to let us. We take the top two floors, raise the ceilings, create an internal staircase, and rebuild the roof garden. It looks like the old Utopia, but there is more steel than exposed brick, and everywhere you look, there are people on their laptops and hunched over desks, all in the same pose of self-satisfaction, because they are doing their dream jobs at a place that inspires envy. And there are other benefits besides the bragging rights: excellent health care and paid maternity leave, karaoke Tuesdays （led by Jules）， the I Think Therefore I Am Club （led by Cyrus）， and the “How to Make Your Robot Joke Authentically Club” （led by me）。