Wresting a Python
The Argus Solutions Startup Story
I had a nightmare last night. One of many lately. A man I know has me in a scissor lock. Pythonesque, he chokes the life out of me. He is a shareholder.
Diary 30 August 2008.
“Pending merger. Lindsay, John and I met at the Barrenjoey Café at Palm Beach. A glistening Sydney summers day which we hoped would be a portent . That evening, for the first time in a couple of years I found I had relaxed. No, we had not signed any contracts but it was clear we had a way forward mapped out. There is many a slip between cup and lip but I think we are on our way. It prompted me to think this was now the time to get cracking and to start capturing the story. It is now a ten year story and I think contains plenty of insights and lessons from the trenches. It seems there are too few of [those lessons available]. I think there is scope for a story that shows ‘how’. And from the perspective of how a small business can think big and crack on with it. It can be a story told not by Harvey Norman or a doyen of the Sydney business world but a non-descript on Pitt Street hunting the money. Food figures in a lot of the stories. The lunch at Aria when Macquarie handed over the contract to underwrite us. Linday was going to ask them to sign it. They arrived with it signed. Lunch at Montecellos. Kerry Packer lunched at the table next to us. My underwriters had arrived early and been placed well. A curt acknowledgement and no introductions but a place to be seen.”
Diary 3 January 2009.
