After Being Kicked Out Before The IPO

At the pre-IPO gala before a multi-billion-dollar Nasdaq listing, Ethan Cole is publicly humiliated. Chairman Richard Sterling calls his technical architecture obsolete, announces a new CTO, and offers him a hundred grand to sign an equity repurchase agreement and walk away. Ten years of writing code, three thousand sleepless nights, and over eight hundred thousand lines of core code mean nothing to them.

Ethan flips the banquet table and reveals he holds the master decryption key. He plays a recording of Richard admitting he planned to kick Ethan to the curb once the IPO cleared, and says he has sent it to the SEC along with records of embezzlement and fraudulent accounting. He warns that an automated root security handshake at 9:00 AM will lock every client database if the master key isn't renewed. Then he walks out.

Outside, Victoria Vance of Sequoia offers to lead a fifty-million-dollar Series A for his new venture, FrostCore Technologies. Ethan tells her he needs three days to clean up the trash first.