Chapter 10: The Article

The article came out on a Thursday morning in a venture capital newsletter that Isla didn't usually read. She read it because Elizabeth sent it to her with the subject line "FYI - minor situation management" and a link.

The piece was titled "Cole Mercer's Marriage of Convenience: A Pattern?" and it was written by a journalist named Stephanie Bradford who apparently had very good sources and very good opinions about venture capital relationships.

The article explained, with impressive precision, that Cole had been dating Katherine Voss, CEO of a health tech startup, for three years until they split in January. Katherine's company was now valued at 200 million dollars. Cole had been on the board through the entire partnership. The journalist suggested that Katherine's success was somehow the result of Cole's involvement, or at least benefited materially from their relationship. Then the journalist mentioned that Cole had "suddenly" married Isla Quinn, a founder he had apparently "just met," and suggested that this might be a pattern.

The word the journalist used was "convenient."

The article was not defamatory. It was careful. It was the kind of journalism that stayed exactly on the right side of implication without ever stating anything that could be proven false. Katherine Voss had benefited from her relationship with Cole. Now Isla was benefiting from her relationship with Cole. The journalist was simply connecting dots and letting readers draw their own conclusions.

The conclusions, Isla could see, were that she was using Cole the way Katherine had used Cole. That this marriage was convenient for her business. That she was the woman who married a rich man to advance her company.

She read the article four times. Then she called Cole at his office.

"Did you see the article?" she asked.

"Yes," Cole said. "Elizabeth sent it to me twenty minutes ago. I've been reading it."

"What do we do?" Isla asked.

"Nothing," Cole said.

"Nothing?" Isla said. "They're calling our marriage convenient. They're implying that I'm using you for your board connections and your money and your venture capital credibility."

"Are you?" Cole asked.

"No," Isla said. "I married you for the venture capital credibility exactly one month ago. The personal stuff happened after. You know this."

"I know that," Cole said. "What I don't know is what you want me to say about this article."

Isla realized she was holding her breath. She was also realizing that she cared very much what Cole would say about this article. She cared because the article was suggesting she was a user, and she cared if Cole believed that.

"I want you to say it's not true," she said.

"It's not true," Cole said. "But I'm not going to say that. Here's what I'm going to say: that article is not relevant."

"It's not relevant?" Isla repeated. "It's implying that I married you for access to venture capital. It's implying that I'm the same as Katherine Voss."

"Are you?" Cole asked again.

"Am I what?" Isla asked.

"The same as Katherine Voss," Cole said. "Did you spend three years with me and then move on to marry someone else for business reasons?"

"No," Isla said.

"Did you use my board connections to build your company before we met?" Cole asked.

"No," Isla said.

"Did you strategically pursue me knowing I could help your business?" Cole asked.

"No," Isla said. She had married him because he proposed. She had married him because he solved a problem. She had fallen in love with him somewhere in the middle of solving other problems. The chronology of this was actually very clear if you looked at it carefully.

"Then it's not relevant," Cole said. "The article is connecting Katherine Voss to you because Katherine's company succeeded and people want to understand why. The journalist is suggesting that my involvement in her success is suspicious. But Katherine's company succeeded because Katherine is brilliant and also because she was willing to take the venture capital that required board oversight. She made choices. You made choices. The choices are different."

"So we just ignore it?" Isla asked.

"We ignore it because it doesn't matter," Cole said. "We ignore it because people in venture capital read gossip columns and decide what they believe based on narrative. The narrative is that I'm a board member who has relationships with founders. That narrative is true. The narrative is also that those relationships sometimes work out and sometimes don't. That narrative is also true. The article is trying to make you into a cautionary tale. The response is to be so clearly not a cautionary tale that people get bored with the narrative."

"How do we do that?" Isla asked.

"You keep growing Quinn & Earth," Cole said. "You keep making decisions that are good for your company and not good for my portfolio. You prove that you're independent. You prove that you married me for the right reasons, which were that I was the only option who could solve your problem and also that somewhere along the way you decided you liked me."

"That's a lot of proving," Isla said.

"It is," Cole said. "But you're very good at proving things. You proved that sustainable fashion could work. You proved that you could survive two company failures. You proved that you could build a third company faster and better than anyone expected. Proving that you married me for love and not leverage is not that hard by comparison."

"When did you decide you liked me?" Isla asked suddenly.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Cole did not usually pause. Cole thought quickly. Cole made decisions with speed. The pause suggested he was choosing his words carefully.

"I decided I liked you when you changed the contract to have an exit clause," he said. "I decided I liked you so much that I wanted to create conditions where you would never want to use the exit clause. I decided I liked you enough that I was willing to spend the next eight months building something that might end in February."

"Eight months is a long time to build something you know has an end date," Isla said.

"Eight months is a long time to build something you know has an end date," Cole agreed. "But here's the thing: I'm very good at building things. And I'm hoping that by February, when the end date arrives, we'll decide that the contract was always the worst part of what we were building."

Isla felt her chest do something that resembled heartbreak but felt more like hope. She was at work. She was at her SoMa office in San Francisco. Cole was in Manhattan. They were having the most important conversation she had ever had with another person and they were doing it over the phone while she stared at designs for the holiday collection.

"I need to go talk to Katherine Voss," Isla said suddenly.

"Why?" Cole asked.

"Because if I'm going to prove that this marriage is not the same as whatever happened with her, I should probably understand what happened with her," Isla said. "Plus, the journalist sourced her. She's the one who made this narrative possible."

"Katherine won't talk to you," Cole said.

"Katherine will definitely talk to me," Isla said. "Because Katherine is probably also furious about being used as a comparison in a vendetta against you, and the way to solve that is for us to solve it together."

There was another pause. Then Cole said, "You're very resourceful."