Instalink (3)
Lee Jaseung had never intended to donate the rubber ball in the first place.
Crafted from the earliest synthetic rubber, it was one of the most prized pieces in his collection. There was no chance he would genuinely let it leave his hands.
It served its purpose as the ticket to the VIP table well enough. Time to take it back.
By putting the rubber ball up for donation he had earned the gala organizing committee’s recognition, secured VIP credentials, and opened the door to mingle with Silicon Valley’s heavyweights. All that remained was reclaiming what was his.
A moment later the auctioneer announced the opening bid.
“Starting bid is one hundred thousand dollars. We’ll begin at one hundred thousand!”
Lee Jaseung raised his paddle without a flicker of hesitation.
“One million dollars.”
Chae Eunchae’s eyes flew wide. The Sequoia executive’s mouth fell open. A matching wave of shock rolled across the VIP tables.
It was not unheard of for a donor to buy back his own item—usually as a flamboyant display of wealth. But no one had ever paid ten times the opening price to do so.
The Sequoia man thought, Is he insane?
He had read the room correctly.
Compete with that guy and the price will climb without end.
That judgment was equally accurate. This was no Sotheby’s or Christie’s. No one here felt like burning money in a pointless bidding war at a charity gala.
The Sequoia executive quietly lowered his paddle.
With that kind of capital I’d rather put money into Instalink and actually make a return.
The other guests seemed to share the sentiment; no further bids came.
Even the auctioneer looked visibly rattled, yet he pressed on with professional composure.
“One million dollars! Do I hear a higher bid?”
Silence.
“One million once… one million twice…”
Lee Jaseung scanned the room at his leisure, fully prepared to answer any challenger. To him the ball was priceless. But no one present wanted it badly enough to outmatch that obsession.
He clicked his tongue in mild disappointment.
I’d heard Silicon Valley was the holy land of risk and bold moves…
“Everyone here’s short on guts.”
“…”
Silicon Valley had just been insulted.
Once the auction closed, Lee Jaseung and Chae Eunchae parted ways. As planned in advance, each would meet with their assigned company.
Jaseung first settled the auction bill. One million dollars—more than 1.1 billion won—yet he signed the check without a second thought. Moments later a staff member returned carrying the rubber ball inside a specialized protective case.
“Please handle it carefully. It’s a genuine million-dollar artifact now.”
Jaseung answered the joke with a light smile, opened the case, and lifted the ball into his palm without hesitation. A glance at his watch showed midnight had just passed. Friday had begun. Three hours remained until 3:00 a.m.
A million-dollar totem, is it?
He tossed the ball lightly and caught it. The surface was rougher and the weight greater than the ones he usually used, yet it would serve perfectly as his daily totem.
Footsteps approached.
“Is it really all right to treat a million-dollar cultural treasure so casually?”
He turned. The CEO of Facenote stood there. The corner of Jaseung’s mouth curved upward.
“It’s a tool, not a cultural treasure. Isn’t science meant to be used, not merely commemorated?”
“Oh—perfect Silicon Valley thinking. Innovation happens in garages, not museums.”
The man answered cheerfully, then glanced around and proposed, “It’s too noisy here. There’s a quiet room further in. Shall we talk there?”
“Gladly.”
They moved to a conference room deeper inside the venue. Once the outside din was shut out, silence settled. Jaseung and Zucker sat across from each other and exchanged business cards.
“Allow me to reintroduce myself. Lee Jaseung, representative of Makers.”
“Mark Zuckers. CEO of Facenote.”
Zuckers tapped the edge of the card lightly.
“I looked into Makers before coming. Your investment history is interesting. You took a massive short position on our IPO, didn’t you?”
“Yes. The valuation at the time was excessively high.”
“Right after that you raised a trillion-won fund and bought our shares in bulk.”
“I judged Facenote’s fundamentals remained solid. It was simply an opportunity to buy cheap.”
“Logical.”
“And accurate.”
Zuckers had intended to press the point that this was the same short-seller who had attacked his company, but the words died. The numbers themselves proved Jaseung had been right. The Instalink acquisition proposal was no different.
Zuckers had been hunting for a mobile-native platform, and Instalink checked every box. The ad model especially impressed me. Platform revenue lived and died by advertising; the way Instalink’s ads blended seamlessly into the user feed was something he wanted to transplant into Facenote yesterday.
He had agreed to this meeting precisely because the offer was that attractive. Yet recognizing his own attraction only sharpened his wariness against being led.
“Why Instalink specifically? There are other options. Snapchat, for instance.”
He probed.
“Or is there a personal interest involved? The woman who came with you seemed quite taken with Instalink.”
Jaseung did not deny it.
“What business is free of personal interest? In that sense, Facenote and I share the greatest alignment of interests. I am genuinely concerned about Facenote’s next generation.”
“Next generation?”
“The press mocks it as ‘Dad’s SNS,’ and the teens and twenties are already migrating to cooler platforms.”
Zuckers’s expression hardened; the remark had struck home.
“Instalink has captured them—the young demographic you need most. Or shall we look at it operationally?”
“Operationally?”
“Instalink has only ten employees. You can absorb them into Facenote immediately.”
“No post-merger integration headaches?”
“There’s the organizational angle, yes, but more practically it means you can transplant mobile DNA at once and start improving performance right away.”
Zuckers quietly revised his earlier talk of Silicon Valley thinking. This man looked only at numbers.
“And the most important point…”
“What is it?”
Zuckers urged him without thinking, then immediately realized the mistake—he had reacted too eagerly.
I’ve been reeled in.
A faint smile touched Jaseung’s lips.
“Instalink is currently running a funding round. Once that round succeeds, an acquisition becomes far more difficult.”
Zuckers understood venture mechanics better than anyone; Facenote had walked the same path.
“More investors mean a more complicated decision structure.”
“Exactly. Right now you only need to persuade the CEO. Later you’ll have to win over Sequoia and every other investor one by one.”
“A nuisance. And the valuation will skyrocket.”
A company that could be bought for a billion dollars today might cost two or three billion next year. Zuckers conceded the point.
“So the timing is now.”
“Precisely. And time is short. The round closes next week—fifty million dollars, nearly finalized.”
“Next week?”
The window was tighter than he had thought. He had been watching Instalink but had not considered acting yet. At this rate the chance could vanish forever.
Jaseung smiled.
“Ready to sit at the table now?”
He had brought Facenote to the negotiating table. Now only Instalink remained.
Jaseung tried contacting Chae Eunchae; the call rang through but she did not answer.
Still negotiating? Or has something gone wrong?
He excused himself and left the conference room. Crossing the corridor into the main hall, he grasped the situation at once.
Past one in the morning the party still seethed with heat—the uncomfortable heat of a disturbance. Every gaze in the room had locked onto one spot.
“You’re the one who coaxed Kevin, aren’t you? Trying to sabotage the funding round we’re leading?”
“Coaxed? What a word. Are you Kevin’s girlfriend or something?”
“Wh-what?”
“It’s a business proposal. Sequoia doesn’t get to monopolize every deal. What’s wrong with offering another option?”
…The Sequoia executive and Chae Eunchae were snarling at each other. Between them the Instalink CEO stood looking thoroughly miserable. Caught trying to play both sides—no wonder he was sweating.
Jaseung read the scene instantly.
She was walking the Instalink CEO out and ran straight into Sequoia.
Exactly. Lately Sequoia Capital had found Instalink’s behavior odd—lukewarm interest in their own funding round. Then they spotted Chae Eunchae and the CEO leaving a meeting room together and understood.
That woman has been stealing Instalink out from under us!
“You’re trying to snatch a deal we cultivated? Don’t you have any business manners?”
“Ah, manners. Remind me what you said when I inquired about investing? ‘Asian investors don’t fit our portfolio,’ was it?”
“That was according to the firm’s investment policy—”
“Company policy! So Sequoia Capital’s investment policy is racial discrimination?”
“R-racial discrimination? How did we get there?!”
Chae Eunchae’s fighting spirit blazed. From childhood she had walked hand-in-hand with her loan-shark grandfather through every kind of chaos.
I could take this fight seventeen-to-one and still win!
At that exact moment her eyes met Jaseung’s. He mouthed the words:
Buy time.
Then he jerked his chin toward the Instalink CEO standing beside her. Chae Eunchae’s expression flipped in an instant.
What? You’re leaving me here and only taking him?
A small nod of confirmation. She clutched the back of her neck.
This bastard! When a delicate woman is getting chewed out like this, aren’t you supposed to ride in on a white horse and save her? Did you never read Cinderella?!
But then—
Money.
One word worked like magic. Right. Need to make money. Need to keep the fund alive. What else am I doing becoming a spectacle in Silicon Valley for?
Close the deal at all costs. Secure the equity at all costs.
Her eyes glittered with predatory light. Seeing that look, the Sequoia executive flinched; the volume of his tirade dropped.
“If you came as the chaebol’s arm candy, you should keep your mouth shut like a well-behaved little tongue—”
“Arm candy?”
Slang for a woman a rich man keeps around as decoration.
So I’ve sunk all the way to ‘arm candy.’ Fine. Candy it is—not Cinderella, just candy. Lonely or sad, I won’t put up with this…
Chae Eunchae swung her arm as if she meant to slap him. A champagne flute happened to be standing right there; by pure coincidence it soaked the Sequoia executive’s jacket thoroughly. No one watching believed it was an accident.
Spectators crowded closer, faces alight with interest.
“Whoa, they’re fighting! Looks like a real fight!”
“The woman from Asia just doused him in champagne! Whew, impressive!”
In the middle of the chaos Lee Jaseung quietly guided the Instalink CEO away. The only silver lining was that cleanup—and the humiliation—fell to the one left behind.
“Wh-wh-what do you think you’re doing?!”
“Who was it that insulted me with ‘arm candy’ first?”
“Do you have any idea how much this jacket costs? It’s a custom Brioni!”
“Fine, I’ll buy you one. This candy’s loaded.”
She answered casually while opening her clutch and pulling out her wallet. The Sequoia executive, still seething as he peeled off the ruined jacket, suddenly scanned the surroundings.
“…? Where did the Instalink CEO go?”
Chae Eunchae, mid-wallet, locked eyes with him across empty air.
“….”
“….”
“You—did you—?”
“Here’s the dry-cleaning money!”
She shoved a thick wad of bills into his hand. All of them were fifty-thousand-won notes featuring Shin Saimdang, but it would have to do. She bolted, shouting over her shoulder:
“Currency exchange is your problem!”
※ This work is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, place names, and events appearing within are entirely fabricated and bear no relation to any real-world counterparts. Specialized knowledge presented has likewise been reconstructed and adapted for narrative purposes and may differ from actual information.