PROLOGUE

SAVE YOUR GENERATION

THEY CAME FROM all over the city in the predawn hours, a
merry band of highly optimized minstrels in purple leggings
and shiny headbands and brightly colored sneakers, walking the
fifteen minutes from the L train or directing an Uber to the for-
mer spice factory in the no-mans-land between Williamsburg
and Greenpoint. The neighborhoods normal early-morning
crowd the dog walkers, the construction workers, the
marathon trainers mostly looked upon them with amused
curiosity. Nothing fazed them anymore.
Once they got into the club, they either headed straight for
the dance floor or descended on the bar, which this morning
was not selling alcohol but rather providing free sustenance in
the form of granola bars and coconut water and green juice (all
sponsored by an on-demand laundry app), which they drank
greedily before, or in some cases while, slithering onto the dance
floor.
This was the October edition of MorningRave, a monthly
gathering devoted to the idea that the best way to start the day
was with the excited energy of a clean-living dance party. It

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 Doree Shafrir

was a movement that in a previous generation might have been

derided as corny, or Mormon. But this was a different New
York. The cynical echo of Generation X had finally been qui-
eted and, along with it, most of the dive bars, rent-stabilized
apartments, bands, underground clubs, clothing boutiques, and
fashion magazines that used to define the city. In its place had
arisen a Promised Land of Duane Reades and Chase ATMs on
every corner, luxury doorman buildings, Pilates studios and spin
classes, eighteen-dollar rosemary-infused cocktails and seven-
dollar cups of single-origin coffee all of which were there
to cater to a new generation of twentysomethings, the data
scientists and brand strategists and software engineers and
social media managers and product leads and marketing as-
sociates and IT coordinators ready to disrupt the world with
apps. And today, like every day, they would work until it was
dark again, and then they would go to dinner parties or secret
cocktail bars or rooftop events, and most of them would end
the night watching Netflix on their laptops in bed, perhaps in
one of the new high-rises summoned directly from a marketing
brochure Doorman! Swimming pool! Rooftop cabanas! Yoga
room! Unparalleled views and the lifestyle you deserve! Few of
them lived alone, but most of them rarely crossed paths with
their roommates. Everyone was just so busy.
Wherever they resided Williamsburg or Bushwick or the
Lower East Side or Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights they em-
braced their neighborhoods ready availability of acai bowls and
yoga studios. They were all in agreement that adulthood could,
and should, be fun.
It was truly a new Gilded Age.
At MorningRave, they danced alone and in pairs, with
friends and with strangers. They danced on the stage and on the

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floor. One woman danced with a baby in a carrier attached to

her torso. (The baby wore headphones.) A guy in a turquoise
headband did a backflip into the crowd and landed on his feet.
They cheered when the DJ told them to make some noise. They
danced with the passion of people for whom nothing ever really
goes wrong.
Twenty-eight-year-old William Mack McAllister was
among them. Many of the sixty-three employees of his startup,
TakeOff, were there too, and as he made his way through the
crowd, coconut water in hand, it seemed as though every other
person said hi. In New Yorks bustling innovation community,
Mack was one of the anointed, at least if you went by consec-
utive number of times hed been named to the TechScene 50
(three), the amount of money in seed funding hed raised for
TakeOff (five million; the industrys news site TechScene had re-
ported it as six million, a figure he had not bothered to correct),
his Twitter follower count (23,782), and how many women
he had slept with since moving to New York City from his
hometown of Dallas six years ago (fifty-one, and there would
have been more if not for a three-month period of self-imposed
celibacy when he was first launching his company). Indeed, by
virtually any metric, Mack McAllister was crushing it, and he
saw no reason why he would not continue to do so for the fore-
seeable future. He held up his phone to take a selfie, making
sure to capture the crowd in back of him, and posted it to Insta-
gram with a caption that read: The best way to start the day: a
massive dance party. #MorningRave #MorningRaveNYC.
There was one person at MorningRave who did not post
any selfies to Instagram. She was there to dance, and only to
dance. Nor did she say hello to Mack. She knew who he was,
but he was not yet aware of her existence. Katya Pasternack

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 Doree Shafrir

was at the party with her boyfriend, Victor, who himself was a
founder of a small company called StrollUp. Katya was twenty-
four years old, but ever since she was a child, people had said
she had an old soul. From what she could tell, this mostly meant
that she preferred the company of people older than herself.
One of the exceptions was this party, which she loved. Katya
weighed ninety-one pounds and had never gone to a gym a day
in her life, but she danced at this party as though it were her
job. Her actual job was as a reporter for TechScene. She took
a break from dancing Victor was at the bar, getting a green
juice squinted and scanned the crowd. Besides Mack, she rec-
ognized no fewer than seventeen startup founders. She took out
her phone and noted all of their names, just in case she felt com-
pelled to write something about any of them later.
At exactly 9:00 a.m., the music stopped, and the dancers
cheered again. They held their phones up to record this mo-
ment, when the thick curtains on the windows of the club
would be drawn back, and the crowd would recite, in unison,
Good morning, good morning, great morning! and then a
cheer, louder than before, would erupt. They posted this mo-
ment on Snapchat and Instagram, on Twitter and Facebook,
anywhere that their message I was here could be loudly,
clearly received.
Most of them still clutched their phones a few minutes later
as they headed out into the morning. Although their eyes
blinked as they adjusted to the sunlight, all of them had their
heads down, looking at their phones. They needed to see how
many people had liked their Instagrams, if anyone had viewed
their Snapchat videos, how many likes and comments so
jelly!!!!!; omg i cant believe i missed this; im here too! where
u at theyd gotten on Facebook, how many people had

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 Startup

retweeted their observation about this being the best party ever.
Mack noted, with no small degree of satisfaction, that his selfie
already had 129 likes. Katya pulled a long-sleeved shirt over her
head, kissed Victor good-bye, and started walking toward the L
train to go to work.
Neither of them knew it yet, but Katya Pasternacks and
Mack McAllisters lives would be intersecting again very soon.

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 1

DO THE MATH

Two Weeks Later

MACK MCALLISTER EXITED his East Village apartment building

wearing a royal-blue gingham-checked button-down shirt
tucked into jeans and a navy blazer. He carried a soft brown
leather briefcase with two buckles, given to Mack by his father
when he graduated from the University of Texas and on which
his initials WSM, William Sumner McAllister were em-
bossed in gold capital letters. His dark brown hair was close-
cropped, which highlighted his somewhat ungainly ears. Mack
considered his ears his secret weapon in that they made him just
slightly unattractive, a characteristic that he found made him ir-
resistibly disarming to women.
This morning, Mack had agreed to give a breakfast presen-
tation at Startup Boot Camp, an incubator that gave founders
office space and access to venture capitalists and other success-
ful entrepreneurs for one year in exchange for 10 percent of
their companies. His Uber, a silver Prius, pulled up right as
he put his headphones on and opened the MindSoothe med-
itation app on his phone. He hit pause as he confirmed his
destination, an office building in the financial district, with the

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driver. Then the opening chimes played, and a soothing female

voice said, Welcome to your meditation session. For the next
twenty minutes, you have granted your mind and your body
permission to connect with the world of thought and feeling.
He closed his eyes. Certainly an Uber in Manhattan at rush
hour was not the most conducive atmosphere for meditation,
but Mack had made it a goal to try to meditate in the most
inhospitable environments. Anyone could meditate in a silent,
darkened room, but could you find peace crawling down Broad-
way? That was the mark of true enlightenment. Meditation
was relatively new in Macks life, despite the fact that he had
developed a workplace-wellness app. But the practice had be-
come popular in the startup scene as a kind of self-improvement
mechanism supposedly even Zuck was a devotee and it did
seem like people at TakeOff were much more productive ever
since he had begun offering guided meditation in the office once
a week.
As the car inched along, honking every minute or so, he tried
to focus on what the app was telling him Continue to bring
awareness to the breath. But his mind kept drifting to his meet-
ing with Gramercy Partners next week, where he was going to
make a case to the partners that they should lead his next round
of funding, his Series A round. He knew it was ambitious, but
he was hoping for a valuation of six hundred million dollars,
and then, maybe, just maybe, the next round of funding would
value TakeOff at over one billion. In startup parlance, Take-
Off would be a unicorn. Silicon Valley might have already been
overrun by unicorns, but here in New York City, they were still
a rare and coveted breed.
TakeOff had started as a company that promoted work-
place wellness; at any point in the day, you could open the

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