They returned several hours later, with Charlie’s arm wrapped in a gigantic Ace bandage, and an appointment to see an orthopedics doctor on Monday. Yes, he had a broken arm, specifically his left radius bone was broken down near the wrist. Monday morning I went to the office as normal, and Marilyn dropped the girls off with me for a few hours while she continued on with Charlie. They returned around lunchtime, with Charlie in a big white plaster cast and an even bigger smile. This was just so cool! He couldn’t wait to go sledding again, and this time they would get the ski jump right!
God save me!
The whole office signed Charlie’s cast and we sent them on their way to go to Friendly’s for ice cream. I debated calling Andrea and having her book me a flight to Timbuctoo. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around when those two figured the ski jump out!
The ski jump idea got a lot closer the next summer. On Bucky’s eighth birthday, his father got him a larger motorbike for motocross racing. Bucky got a 65 cc. dirt bike, and Tusker asked Marilyn and me if we wanted his older and smaller 50 cc. bike. Marilyn wasn’t all that thrilled, but we’d never hear the end of it if we didn’t at least give him a shot at it. Tusker gave us the bike; we simply had to go down to his store and buy him a helmet and some racing leathers. Tusker sold them, too, and I think they cost more than the bike! Tusk Cycle was a full stop shop, and would happily relieve you of all the money in your wallet, and then sell you a biker’s wallet. On the other hand, since I was a part owner, I was recycling my money. Sort of.
Regardless, Charlie was in seventh heaven with that thing. Once we got it home, he started it up and put on his helmet and then immediately began riding. It turned out that Bucky had been giving him lessons whenever the various parental units weren’t looking! Within two days, Charlie was riding all over the property, driving Dum-Dum crazy, and carving our 25 acres into a dirt bike track.
Marilyn watched him with considerable trepidation. What she secretly wanted, I knew, was for Charlie to have an accident, nothing serious, but enough of one that he would convince himself to stop riding a motorcycle. I knew better. I wasn’t any more thrilled than she was, but at almost five, Charlie was as much of a biker as his Uncle Tusker. By the end of the summer, we let him ride in his first official race. He placed second, and wanted to know when he could come back again, because he wanted to win! His mother and I congratulated him, and then looked at each other with concern. We had created a monster!
Chapter 88: Celebrity
In July of ’86 my happily anonymous life came to an end. I suppose I should have realized it was going to happen, but it just never occurred to me. It was my fault, of course, but I never thought it through.
I made the cover of Fortune magazine.
If I had stayed home and just counted my money, nobody would have ever have known about me. No, I let my friends, people that I trusted, talk me into becoming a businessman, so it was all my fault.
I should have known better. When you become successful, people want to know about you, and other people start writing newspaper and magazine stories about you. In this case, Fortune decided to write an article about the venture capital and private equity business. Well, that was our business, and we were one of the smaller but more successful firms in the field. It was probably inevitable that this would happen sooner or later, and it’s better to be in the newspapers for being successful than for going bankrupt.
Looking back on it, we figured that the press first learned about us when we were listed in Microsoft’s prospectus prior to their Initial Public Offering, or IPO. As owners of 6 % of the company, we were named. By July, the prospectus for Adobe Systems was out as well, and we were listed there, too. We had already been named in the IPO for Autodesk the year before, but nobody had come to ask us then. Three tech companies going public in the space of a year, with the same small and unknown private equity outfit listed? That was too much of a coincidence!
We had prepared for this eventuality, to a certain extent. We had created brief bios on all five of the principals in the company, both for SEC purposes and for various prospectuses. These were limited to our professional qualifications and history, and pretty bland. ‘Mr. Buckman graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1977 and then served four years in the United States Army… ‘ — that sort of thing. We worked them up for all of us.
Initially, Melissa got the call from the New York office of Fortune, asking for a response and assistance in a story about the private equity and venture capital business. When I asked her why she agreed to help, her response was simple. “They’re going to write a story either way. You want them to print that the Buckman Group was unresponsive and secretive?”
I grimaced but agreed with her. In Hollywood they might say that the only bad publicity is no publicity, but that didn’t necessarily apply to us. Her response had been to send them our curriculum vitae, and we generated a nicely bland press release acknowledging our involvement with the recent IPOs. I never gave it another thought. I figured they would focus on the big name firms out on Sand Hill Road, like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, or maybe a couple of the New York or Boston firms. We would be, at best, a blip in a paragraph at the bottom of the piece.
It didn’t quite work out that way. They never explained why, but it had to have been the three big tech IPOs in a row that made us known. It wasn’t like we handled them, either. We just owned pieces of the three hottest offerings in a year. Who were we? Where did we come from? How did we operate?
Both Melissa and John agreed we had to cooperate. If you don’t control your story, somebody else, somebody who doesn’t have your best interests at heart, will control it. I couldn’t fault their logic. I simply reminded everybody that we couldn’t speak about non-public deals or divulge confidential information of any sort. Any communications would be by one of the five of us.
The reporter showed up on Wednesday morning a little before ten. Missy had warned us all he was going to be there in the morning, but I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time. When he didn’t get there at nine, I figured he would show when he showed, and went into a meeting in my office with Jake Junior and a couple of the tax lawyers and accountants. At ten, John knocked on my door and came in without waiting for a reply. He found us working at my conference table, and we all looked up when he came in. “Quick, guys! It’s the boss! Look busy!” I said, and picked up some papers in front of me and shuffled them. We had pulled this stunt on John before, so everybody picked up their papers and rattled them loudly.
John turned to the man behind him and said, “See what I have to put up with? Are you sure you want to interview anybody here?”
There was a pleasant laugh and a tall, slim figure came around from behind John and stepped into the room. “I’ll take my chances.”
“On your head be it!” He came closer and said, “Carl, this is Geoff Colvin from Fortune Magazine. Behave or I’ll tell Marilyn on you.”
I dropped the papers on the table and stood up. I came around the table and extended my hand. “Mister Colvin, welcome to the Buckman Group.” I turned back to the others. “We’ll finish this up later, but you guys have the general idea. Pack it up and get to work. Jake, stick around a bit.”
Jake nodded and leaned towards the others to speak quietly. I turned back to Colvin. For some reason he looked familiar, but not completely. Then it hit me. In another thirty years or so he would be one of the senior editors at Fortune and a nationally recognized speaker on business — and bald! “I’ll behave. He really will tell Marilyn on me! How can we help you, Mister Colvin.”