Instalink (4)
Facenote and Instalink.
The CEOs of the two companies hit it off like old comrades reunited on the battlefield.
"Our servers went down again, you know. The entire staff had to come in at three in the morning just to reboot everything…"
"I know, right! Same with us. We propped the servers up on pizza boxes and cooled them with desk fans. Hahaha."
Engineers.
To them, code was art, a server crash was war, and pizza was combat rations.
Lee Jaseung crossed his legs and propped an elbow on the armrest, content to watch and wait for this tedious conversation to finally end.
"By the way, that image filter algorithm of yours—how did you implement the vintage effect?"
"That? It started as a bug, actually. But the users loved it, so we left it in."
What began as shop talk drifted all the way back to their college days.
Facenote, born in a Harvard dorm room. Instalink, whose first lines of code were written in a Stanford library.
The classic origin stories of success, already clichés.
Next would come the hard early days, of course.
"When we only had ten users, we literally approved every single signup by hand."
"Ten? For our first month the only users were my mom and my girlfriend!"
Laughter exploded around the table.
Jaseung glanced at his watch.
One in the morning.
Time to drag them down into the world of numbers.
He bounced the ball once. Thud—the dull, heavy sound of a million dollars hitting the floor made Kevin jump and stare.
"Forgive the interruption, gentlemen, but I am still here."
"Ah—sorry. We got completely lost in the tech talk."
"It was fascinating. Including the parts I understood absolutely none of."
"Hahaha. You've got a good sense of humor."
It had been one hundred percent sincere, but they took it as a joke and moved on.
"In any case, I fully understand that development is never easy."
Kevin, the CEO of Instalink, shook his head.
"Honestly, development was the easy part. These days it's investor meetings, legal reviews, HR management… there's no time left to code. I look at more Excel sheets than code now."
"Is that why you're considering an exit?"
"To be frank, yes. I just wanted to build a great app. I blinked and somehow I was the CEO."
Jaseung looked at Zuckers. The prologue had been laid; it was time to take the next step.
Zuckers leaned forward and picked up the thread.
"Then come to Facenote. Instalink stays independent, but becomes part of the Facenote family. All the admin work you hate—legal, finance, HR—our teams will handle it. You focus solely on product."
Kevin's eyes went wide.
"I stay on as CEO?"
"Of course. No one knows Instalink better than you. Facenote is a great company, but we can't claim to understand Instalink's soul."
An exit—and still CEO of Instalink, still a pure developer.
It was a generous offer. The tension visibly left Kevin's shoulders.
"So what are the terms of the acquisition?"
Before coming here, Zuckers had already secured internal consensus from management on the price—an unusually high figure to pay for a startup.
"One billion dollars."
He flicked a glance at Jaseung, half-hoping the man's usual dry expression would crack into surprise.
Jaseung merely gave a small nod, as if he had expected nothing less. Somehow that took the wind out of the moment.
Kevin, on the other hand, was the one who reeled.
"One billion dollars?!"
"Yes. Five hundred million in cash and five hundred million in Facenote stock."
In that instant, the Series B round vanished cleanly from Kevin's mind.
He had been trying to raise fifty million. They had just offered twenty times that.
And under Facenote's umbrella, he would never again have to worry about pressure from VCs like Sequoia. Kevin murmured, still dazed.
"Wow… I can hardly believe it."
"That's how much we believe in Instalink. Do you accept?"
"Of course!"
After that it moved at lightning speed. Due-diligence schedule, draft contract review timeline, approval process—once the broad framework was set, the meeting wrapped.
Kevin stood.
"I'll take my leave first. I need to go see Miss Chae."
With the M&A sealed, Chae Eunchae was due her share.
She would finally secure the fifteen percent of Instalink she had wanted so badly.
Jaseung nodded and rose as well.
"By all means. My partner is taking refuge in a suite upstairs. Zuckers—shall we?"
"Let's. It's already past two."
The two men left the conference room and headed for the main hall.
As they walked the corridor, Zuckers kept glancing sideways at Jaseung until curiosity finally won.
"You're not surprised."
Jaseung gave him a blank look, as if to ask what he meant.
"Was there a surprise I somehow missed?"
"Haha. The acquisition price."
Ah. The billion dollars. Expensive, yes.
Jaseung shrugged.
"It wasn't an incomprehensible number."
"Right?"
"Yes. It includes the cost of cutting off a growing shoot called Instalink—and the cost of keeping it out of a competitor's hands, like Twitter's."
"See? Even the experts think so. Our board fought me so hard on this…"
Only then did Jaseung understand why Zuckers had brought it up.
He was anxious.
Last year he had cut the IPO price in half; when this M&A was announced the stock would take another short-term hit.
He wanted confirmation.
That he had not chosen wrong.
Jaseung gave him the words he needed to hear.
"A billion dollars may look expensive, but the loss from missing the opportunity would have been incomparably greater. Imagine if Twitter had acquired Instalink."
"God, what a nightmare. Hearing you say that, I feel like I made the right call."
Zuckers would catch hell for it later, but that was none of Jaseung's concern.
"This acquisition will transform Facenote for the mobile era. In the end it will be remembered as the greatest M&A in Silicon Valley history."
Zuckers laughed, the weight lifting from his face.
"And you'll be the consultant who brokered the greatest M&A."
A faint smile touched the corner of Jaseung's mouth.
No reason to deny it.
"One billion dollars?"
Chae Eunchae's voice jumped an octave.
She had fled the chaos of the venue to a room in the same hotel; Kevin's news left her stunned.
Kevin looked puzzled in return.
"You didn't know? I assumed your partner had persuaded Facenote."
"???"
Jaseung oppa?
"When Mr. Zuckers mentioned one billion, Mr. Lee didn't even blink. Like he'd known all along. So I naturally thought you'd coordinated in advance."
This was the first she was hearing of it.
How the hell did he get them to spend a billion dollars? Did Jaseung oppa really talk Facenote into it?
It was possible. Lee Jaseung could talk a president into something, never mind Facenote.
Eunchae had known nothing, but she was excellent at taking credit.
"Oh my, I can't believe that actually worked. It was such a bold number—I'm so glad it went through!"
"Haha. Thanks to you, we got an incredible exit price."
"Then I suppose we should settle up between ourselves as well?"
Eunchae switched into business mode.
With the M&A complete, the promised terms kicked in.
—The opportunity to invest in fifteen percent of Instalink.
"Based on the Series B valuation of fifty million dollars. Calculating from that…"
"If I invest seven and a half million, I get fifteen percent."
"Exactly."
"Yes!"
Eunchae's eyes sparkled as she let out a cry of delight.
Finally—fifteen percent was in her hands! Finally!!
The hair-pulling brawl with the Sequoia executive earlier suddenly felt like nothing.
Kevin extended his hand.
"You really did great work. I doubt any investor has ever hit an exit this fast, Miss Chae."
Well, of course—in a week it would be sold straight to Facenote.
The fifteen percent she was buying for $7.5 million would be worth $150 million a week later.
A twentyfold return in a single week!
Ah, the rush!
Grinning from ear to ear, Eunchae shook his hand.
"Clean deal. Mutual win-win, right?"
"Haha. I hope we keep a good relationship going forward. When Instalink expands into Asia, we'll need your help, Miss Chae."
"Of course, of course. Call anytime. Ah—it's late, you should go. Tomorrow… wait, it's already today. You'll be busy today too."
She waved him off vigorously. The moment Kevin closed the door behind him, Eunchae began bouncing around the room.
"Yes! Yes! Hell yes, we did it!!!"
The best record since founding Chae Partners.
No—the highest return in the shortest time in the history of Korean private equity.
"Of course I still have to cut Jaseung oppa his fifty million…"
They had agreed that once the deal closed, thirty percent of the equity she secured would go to Makers.
Of the $150 million, $50 million was Lee Jaseung's share.
Even after that, $100 million remained.
"One hundred million dollars! One hundred million in a week!"
Results like this would leave the investors more than satisfied. Redemption worries were over.
"Redemptions? Please. Additional capital is going to pour in. How much performance fee will I take this time? Twenty percent would be twenty million? Hee-hee-hee!"
Still bouncing, she flopped onto the bed. Adrenaline raced through her body until her fingertips trembled—yet at the same time a strange sense of release settled over her.
"Wow… my heart's still racing."
Had she ever flipped the table and dragged everything by the scruff of the neck exactly the way she wanted?
Throwing champagne at a Sequoia partner, hauling a Big Tech giant like Facenote to the negotiating table.
This was nothing like simply moving numbers on a chart.
The thrill of crushing the impossible and seizing what she wanted by force.
It was the first time she had tasted that feeling.
But.
That's Jaseung oppa's specialty, not mine.
Eunchae checked the clock. Already three in the morning.
Yaaawn… so sleepy. Ah, whatever. I'll just stick to what I know.
Once she returned to Korea, everything would settle back into place.
As Chae Eunchae, who always rode the trends with absolute certainty!
When is the true climax of a gala?
When the million-dollar auction is underway?
At the after-party of billionaires?
The moment a billion-dollar deal is sealed?
No. For Lee Jaseung, it was this exact moment.
He made his way to the second-floor terrace—a quiet space where he could be alone.
Leaning on the railing, he looked down at the glittering party hall spread out below.
The main hall where Eunchae had thrown her spectacular fit earlier had lost some of its fever, but plenty of people still milled about.
2:55 a.m. Three o'clock was almost here.
He took out the million-dollar totem and rolled it between his fingers.
The instant of entering the future was always something to look forward to, but tonight felt special. The sheer number of questions filling his head told him that much.
When will future me visit Silicon Valley again? How many years from now? How many of the startups in that main hall will still be alive?
That was when it happened.
"Oh my—someone's already here. My apologies."
The British accent from behind made Jaseung turn.
A man with round glasses who radiated the air of a professor.
Jaseung frowned. The moment of entry was seconds away; he had no desire to introduce unnecessary variables.
He was about to dismiss the man coldly when a scrap of conversation from the VIP table floated back to him.
"An AI startup from the UK."
"Ah, the one training AI on games? But AI is still so much vaporware…"
"With AI you don't look at the product—you look at the research team. Their team is supposedly quite solid."
That was why he had taken note.
DeepMind?
The name flashed through his mind at the exact moment the second hand struck twelve.
Three a.m.
The terrace began to blur.
The British man's face dissolved like mist; the lights of the party hall wavered like water.
And in the next instant—
Lee Jaseung was standing in Korea, four years in the future.
※ This work is a work of fiction. All characters, groups, place names, and events appearing in the story are entirely fictional and bear no relation to any real-world counterparts. Specialized knowledge described herein has also been restructured and adapted for the narrative and may differ from actual information.