O'Connor Burger 1
It was no exaggeration to say the world had gone startup-crazy in recent years.
Thanks to advances in technology, founding a company had become easier and far less risky. In the past, starting a business had been something only exceptional people could do; now, as long as you had skill and drive, anyone could give it a try.
Waking up one morning to find yourself a millionaire was no longer all that rare.
Shawn O'Connor, who had always been interested in starting a business, decided to jump into the market with his friend Fernando Domingo and see if they could seize an opportunity.
Luck was on their side. Before heading to Silicon Valley, they secured a $100,000 investment from a Korean man who had visited their shop with his younger sister.
At first, Shawn had assumed he was just a rich Asian guy throwing money around for fun, and he hadn’t given it much thought.
Even when he heard the name Continue Capital, he thought it was just another venture capital firm.
But not long after, he realized that was very far from the truth.
Continue Capital had made a name for itself on Wall Street by tanking Thomas Motors with a single report. Then it went on to acquire Snow Crash, formerly Cooloud, the most expensive startup in Silicon Valley.
This was an enormous private equity firm—and it had invested in their company.
Thrilled by the fact that they had received funding from one of Wall Street’s rising private equity powers, the two of them were practically buzzing with excitement.
“Continue Capital invested in us!”
“Woo! For some reason, this feels like we’re about to hit it huge!”
Shawn and Fernando ate, slept, and lived in Fernando’s one-room apartment while throwing themselves into development.
Silicon Valley’s cost of living was far worse than Shawn had expected. A single room cost a staggering $3,000 a month in rent.
They saved even on coffee and burned with determination.
There were plenty of founders like them in Silicon Valley. They met other developers through seminars and apps, exchanged information, and gradually patched up the gaps in their own work.
When they finally finished development, the two of them embraced and cried tears of joy.
Developers generally all dream of the same thing.
The dream that the app they made will blow up the moment it launches.
But…
Reality was not so kind.
The app they built was not welcomed by the market.
At first, they had thought a good idea would be enough to succeed. But once they actually tried, the problems turned out to be endless.
The UI was a mess, and the app lagged constantly. It didn’t sync properly with maps, and errors kept popping up every few minutes.
Whenever something broke, they stayed up all night trying to fix it, but the problems never stopped, and they couldn’t even secure proper partnerships.
The biggest issue was that identical apps already existed, and those companies were running aggressive marketing campaigns.
Some of them were practically showering customers with $5 and $10 coupons.
Of course, users flocked there instead. Traffic plunged, and once even the criticism stopped rolling in, the two of them finally understood.
They were dead in the water.
In truth, it wasn’t all that strange.
There was a statistic that said nine out of ten startups fail within three years. The only reason anyone starts a business is that no one thinks they’ll be one of the nine.
But when that became their reality, the disappointment was crushing.
“If we just get more users, we’ll be fine.”
“But we’re not getting more users.”
“Do you think we’re done for?”
The two of them tried everything they could to save the app, but in the end they had no choice but to admit defeat.
The thought that all their hard work had gone up in smoke left them dazed. Still, they had to report the failure to their investor.
Shawn O'Connor sent an email to Continue Capital.
And not long after, he received a reply from someone.
“Hello, this is Han Miru.”
“Ah! Hello.”
It was none other than the Korean man who had invested in them at the very beginning.
When people talked about Continue Capital, only David Lockhart’s name tended to come up. Han Miru’s name was barely known at all.
But Shawn had heard from his sister. He knew that the person who had actually put up the money and driven the founding of Continue Capital was Han Miru himself.
I was back in Silicon Valley.
As usual, I checked into the JR Blackwood Hotel in Palo Alto, which I could use free of charge.
This time, too, the manager came down personally to greet me.
“Thank you for choosing our hotel, Chairman Han. We’ll make sure your stay is comfortable and free of inconvenience.”
“I appreciate that. I’ll be counting on you while I’m here.”
Not paying a cent and still getting that kind of treatment.
It really did make me think people should live kindly. If you’d done something for someone, it was only natural to receive something in return.
After unpacking and resting a while, I met the founders of Blue Wagon at the café in the lobby.
“Long time no see.”
Shawn O'Connor grabbed my hand.
“Yes. It’s good to see you again.”
I remembered meeting him at the pub I’d visited with Trish O'Connor.
Back then, he’d seemed broad-faced and rounded around the edges, but now he had lost a lot of weight. The dark circles under his eyes told me he had been through a lot.
He had probably learned firsthand that startups weren’t something to take lightly.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Fernando Domingo. Shawn has told me a lot about you.”
His business partner and friend was a Mexican-American young man.
He stood around 5'9", with dark skin and a shaved head. Just from the greeting alone, I could tell he had a bright, easygoing personality.
We exchanged greetings and took our seats.
Unlike when we had first met, Shawn O'Connor looked terribly tense.
Part of it was the difference in Continue Capital’s standing now compared to then. And part of it was probably that, back then, he had been an aspiring founder, while now he had failed.
He looked a little discouraged, too.
Fernando leaned forward and asked, “I heard Snow Crash handled that ransomware incident recently. Did you go there yourself?”
“Yes. I went to Blackwood’s headquarters with CEO Lucas.”
“I was stunned when I heard. The whole industry’s been talking about it. Everyone brings it up the moment they meet me.”
Some people were even predicting that this would trigger a seismic shift in the cloud industry.
Anyone working in tech would have to be interested.
According to the rumors circulating through Silicon Valley, when everyone was drowning in pain and despair from the ransomware attack, Syd Lucas had suddenly appeared, caught the criminals, and opened the servers himself.
“Did he really say, ‘Let there be light,’ and then the servers came to life?”
“……”
Did he actually say that?
Either way, by now it was a hero story through and through. Syd had become a star without even realizing it.
If he held a fan meeting in Silicon Valley, wouldn’t developers come flooding in?
“If you see him later, please tell him I really admire him.”
“You should tell him that yourself.”
“Pardon?”
“We’re practically neighbors anyway. I’ll introduce you to him sometime soon.”
“Really? Thank you!”
Fernando and Shawn looked thrilled at my words.
I took a sip of coffee and said, “Now then, let’s talk about Blue Wagon.”
At that, the expressions on their faces darkened at once.
Shawn explained the company’s situation.
He said a lot of things, but the conclusion was simple.
“So the investment money is gone, and the app failed.”
“Th-that’s right.”
The two of them lowered their heads as if they’d done something wrong.
“I’m not criticizing you. Business is like that. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t. The same goes for investing.”
Nine out of ten startups fail.
Even so, venture capital remains active because if nine fail and only one succeeds, you still make money.
And failure doesn’t end as failure.
The people involved use it as a stepping-stone to their next venture, while other companies work to avoid making the same mistakes.
That’s how the virtuous cycle of entrepreneurship is created.
My words seemed to brighten their faces a little.
“So what do you plan to do now? You’re not going to shut the company down, are you?”
Shawn shook his head at the question.
“No, I… if possible, I’d like to keep trying.”
“That’s the right attitude. But what exactly do you want to try?”
“Well… that’s actually the part I’m still struggling with most.”
So he had the urge to do something, but he still didn’t know what that something should be.
That was a common problem for first-time founders. If they panicked and started a company just by chasing trends, they’d only fail again.
“For now, I’d like to keep developing apps in this field.”
“Apps related to food trucks and restaurants?”
“Yes.”
From the look on their faces, I could tell they were hoping for more investment.
Back in my first life, funding had dried up, and they had no choice but to jump into the food truck business because they couldn’t make ends meet.
So this time, I’d need to steer them in that direction as well.
I casually floated the idea. “How about you two try running a food truck?”
Their reaction was stunned disbelief.
“A food truck?”
“Yes. Actually doing it would help you decide your future direction, too.”
Companies rarely stick to the exact business model they first chose.
Depending on market conditions, they make adjustments little by little, and sometimes they pivot entirely.
That’s called pivoting.
Fernando thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
“Come to think of it, that could work. I guess getting field experience would help with developing the app, too.”
Shawn still looked troubled.
“But if we were to do a food truck, what would we even sell…?”
Why was he even agonizing over this?
“You’d sell O'Connor Burger, of course.”
Shawn jumped at my words.
“Huh? O'Connor Burger?”
“If you can make it already, isn’t it easier to sell something you know how to make?”
“Well, yes, but… there are already so many cheap, good burger places here. Would it really sell?”
For him, O'Connor Burger was just the burger he’d always eaten at home.
He didn’t think it was anything special, but to people in this neighborhood, it would be different. It would be a taste they’d never had anywhere else.
“It looks like it’ll do well, so go ahead and try it.”
“If we sold something else, maybe, but that’s a little…”
Something about the way he said it struck me as odd.
“Why not? Is there some reason you can’t sell O'Connor Burger?”
“It’s just….”
After hesitating for a moment, Shawn let out a sigh and said, “Actually, my father wanted me to inherit the shop. We fought about it a lot because of that.”
“Really?”
I pictured the look of the old man who ran O'Connor Burger.
If I’d been his son, I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to fight him.
“Once, I even shouted at my father, ‘I don’t want to live my life just making hamburgers.’”
Even after regressing, I didn’t know everything. I could know the outcome, but not every step that led there.
So O'Connor Burger had hidden this little backstory, had it?
“Of course, I do love the place. I just didn’t want my life to be trapped there. In the end, my father gave in and let me leave.”
That, at least, I could understand.
When life feels like it’s following a track laid out in advance, you end up wanting to break free from it.
“So I left New York and came to Silicon Valley….”
He had shouted that he didn’t want to live a life making hamburgers, then flown all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast.
And now he was about to end up selling those very hamburgers here.
That was why people shouldn’t speak carelessly.
Either way, he was destined to make O'Connor Burger. If it wasn’t Shawn O'Connor, then who else would make it?
“Why did you choose app development?”
Perhaps embarrassed to say it out loud, Shawn gave an awkward laugh.
“Because it helps people. And if it succeeds, it can make a lot of money.”
“Delicious burgers help people more than a good app ever could.”
“It’s still just a hamburger.”
“Chairman Lockhart has a daughter who’s been sick. A tiny, adorable little girl named Meggie. She took one bite of O'Connor Burger and said, ‘Eating O'Connor Burger made me want to get better faster. O'Connor Burger gave me courage and hope. Someday, when I’m all better and walk out of the hospital, I want to come eat O'Connor Burger with my dad.’ After that, she started taking her treatment even more seriously.”
Shawn couldn’t hide his shock.
“I-Is that really true?”
“……”
Come to think of it, maybe I hadn’t actually said anything that specific.
Best to move past that part.
I pressed Shawn hard while he was still wavering.
“O'Connor Burger is going to succeed. It might even become the next McDonald’s.”
“The next McDonald’s.”