Page 7 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
“We’d gate the partner function at eighteen,” someone else says, and I turn to look at her. “Allow people to set their own age ranges. Then pair them with their best match within their designated parameters.”
“It’s already set up,” I say. My heart is ping-ponging against myribs, but I realize I’m not nervous anymore. I’m freakingexcited. “I wrote the algorithm to match people based on their survey results; it’s all there, I just didn’t have—”
“Critical mass,” Evelyn finishes for me. “With over a million downloads, we’re there, Rose. We just need to prove that it works, that you’re hardwired to fall in love with your MASH match.”
“I developed the questions with a behavioral scientist,” I tell her, glancing around the table. “But it was just for a school project. I don’t know if it’ll be right one hundred percent of the time, for every single user. I don’t know if it’ll work perfectly.”
“It doesn’t need to work perfectly,” Evelyn says. “People just need to believe that it does. And you’ll make them believe.”
Breath swells inside of me, full to bursting. Iwantthis.
“How?” Dad says. When I look at him, there’s something worried in the set of his jaw, like he’s hearing something here that I’m not. “How will she make them believe?”
“With the ultimate proof point,” Evelyn tells him. “She’ll take the survey, and she’ll fall in love with her match.”
05
“Absolutely not,” Dad says as soon as the elevator doors close. He kept it together in the conference room, deflecting us out of there with a neutralWe’ll think it over. But now that we’re alone, he’s almost apoplectic.
“This is too much to take on with school, Ro.” He jabs the garage button once, twice, three times before we finally start to move. “You can’t be expected to manage both. You saw that workback plan, there are milestones every week from here to February. You have other priorities that are more im—”
“They’re not more important,” I say, and a muscle jumps in his temple.
“There’s nothing more important than your schoolwork.”
“The whole point of my schoolwork is to get me here,” I say, gesturing toward the elevator doors. “Do well in school so I can graduate so I can get a job. Right?” He doesn’t say anything, because he knows where I’m leading him and he doesn’t like it.Still, I say it again. “Right?”
He’s quiet, so I keep going. “I can come in after school. I’ll work here in the afternoons.”
He shakes his head. “You didn’t even want to do your project during the year because you knew it would be too much with school.”
“Dad, this is different—”
“Yeah, it’smore. It’s unreasonable, Ro.”
“I can handle it! And by the time I graduate we’ll be funded and I’ll be able to come on full-time and—”
“You really want to give them half of what you made?” His brown eyes are dark in the shadowy elevator. “You did this, Ro. It’s yours. You give them fifty percent, that’s not true anymore.”
I swallow, and the doors slide open. Idon’twant to give XLR8 fifty percent, is the truth. When I saw the number on the contract it tickled at the back of my brain, suffusing my pure-white excitement with a bloodred drop of doubt. Fifty percent is orders of magnitude higher than any other accelerator I’ve researched—but then again, I’m only one person. I don’t have a team behind me yet, or any resources to bring to the table at all. XLR8 is ready to give me everything I need.
And besides, the contract held so much more than that jarring fifty percent figure. It promised dedicated, full-time teams. All the funding it takes to get us to Celeritas. And, impossible to ignore: a job waiting for me when I graduate.
I won’t make any money up front, but with XLR8’s help, we can win over Celeritas. And if we win them over, MASH will take off—I’ll own fifty percent of a successful app and make moremoney than I can hardly stand to dream of.
This contract is my ticket to everything I want: bypass college, enter the tech industry with a bang. Evelyn was right, what she said in that conference room overlooking the mountains: I can’t scale this without a team. And nothing is perfect. This is close enough for me.
“Dad, with their resources—”
“Theirresources.” He practically spits the word. “Their big, genius strategy to pair you off for profit like some contestant on that ridiculous show you and Maren watch.” He unlocks the car, waving one hand around.
“The Bachelor?”
“Yeah,The Bachelor.” We slide into the front seat and he looks at me. “You’re not a proof point, Ro. You’re my kid.”
“I know,” I say, and his eyebrows shoot up. “I know, I know. But it’s temporary, Dad, the dating thing will be fake, I just have to pretend for a few months and then—”
“Pretend to love some stranger for a few months? Do you hear yourself?”
