2020–2021: NEA pulls back in the pandemic, and survival comes down to an old Stanford friendship and an extraordinary automobile (S-101).
NEA pulls back in the pandemic; WebShield's survival is priced at $40,000, a convertible note, and a gray-market BMW Z8. Vignette 10 of S-101, near-verbatim.
Because the architecture's survival through the pandemic has a precise price and a precise friend attached, and the record keeps both — along with what the equity was supposed to buy and hasn't yet.
In December 2021 AJ Agarwal — who had lost $200k in the Resilient coup — lent $40,000 against a WebShield convertible note and Hare's gray-market European BMW Z8; the car was saved, and Hare is 'still waiting' for the strategic engagement.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
The survival of WebShield during the macro-economic shock of COVID in 2020 came down to an old Stanford friendship and an extraordinary automobile. When NEA pulled back from WebShield during the pandemic panic, the company faced an immediate cash crunch. I turned to my GSB classmate AJ Agarwal — who had previously lost his $200,000 investment in the 2014 Resilient boardroom coup.
In December 2021, AJ agreed to a $40,000 short-term survival loan. As collateral I pledged my European-specification 2000 BMW Z8 — a rare vehicle I had personally imported and legalized through the specialized gray-market conversion facilities used by Jay Leno. I subsequently repaid $30,000 in cash; AJ converted the remaining $10,000 into convertible debt; and to reward him and re-engage his strategic mind I granted him 20,000 WebShield shares and an advisory board seat, with the explicit understanding that he would spend dedicated time with me to truly understand the depth of the architecture.
Despite the equity and the board seat, that engagement never materialized. As I note wryly today regarding my old friend's strategic involvement: 'I'm still waiting.' But the Z8 was saved.
A friendship that survived a coup, priced a company's survival at forty thousand dollars and a roadster — and the record keeps the founder's dry accounting of what the equity was actually for.
Episodes are building blocks. The same material appears in more than one where it belongs in more than one, and every claim traces back to a primary source.
GSB classmate; the coalition backer of 2013, the bridge lender of the COVID crunch, and the advisory seat still waiting to be used
Open →In the graphThe company of the record's middle era: the AMA signature, the inBloom salvage, the Verizon and White House threads, and the estate the foundational patent anchors
Open →In the graphThe trust network, and the intelligence years
Open →