(Note: This was the first chapter that I wrote. It is written in past-tense, a stylistic choice I later changed (to present-tense) but never adjusted in this chapter.)
Have you ever noticed that presidents tend to have distinct, memorable, and well-penned signatures? During my first week on the campaign, I realized that Andrew Yang had either not taken note, or chosen not to follow their lead.
At the time, I was designing the campaign website, and I wanted to place his signature at the bottom of the biography section. I picked up a letter Yang had just signed to see what I was working with. I was horrified. Is that even a signature?
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “You can’t seriously be signing things like this, are you?”
Yang stared at me blankly, picked up the letter, examined the squiggle closely, and shrugged. "Yeah, that's my signature. I’ve never really thought too much about it. Why?"
“Oh, well, we have to create a new one,” I began, “you’re running for president of the United States. We must keep a tight image, and the signature is critical to that.”
I grabbed my laptop and pulled up a Reddit post containing former U.S. presidents’ signatures.
“Look, man,” I said, scrolling through the list of unanimously beautiful Hancocks, “this is what you’re up against.”
Yang watched thoughtfully, the gears of his mind turning. When I reached Obama’s most immaculate signature, with its curvy capital B and distinctive vertical slashed O, Yang jumped up from his seat, “All right! I’m in!”
I don’t know if it was due to my showmanship, or if Yang just wanted to put an end to my nagging, but either way — the signature workshop was on.
Yang and I took a seat on the floor. Shoeless and cross-legged, we scrawled out new iterations of his signature on the back of old envelopes.
The first few tries were disappointing — Yang kept unknowingly scribbling the same signature as before and asking me, “is it pretty?” in a childish voice.
Laughing and slightly unsure of how to provide constructive feedback, I responded, “Uh, not quite… try to form some letters ... or something.”
The signature needed to meet a few criteria. First, it needed to be legible. Second, it needed to be simple enough for Yang to be able to write on the fly. Third, it needed to carry a distinctive feature that would make it memorable — like that undeniably cool vertical slash in Barack Obama’s autograph.
We had burned through our pile of envelopes and made little progress — but then I had my lightbulb moment.
“You know,” I spoke up, “When I was in the fourth grade, I sucked at cursive. But this girl I had a crush on taught me a trick that totally saved me during yearbook season.”
Yang looked up, intrigued, so I continued, “Her strategy was simple yet effective — sign the first and last initials of your name big and clear in regular print, then scribble the rest.”
Yang shrugged. “Worth a try, I guess.”
I grabbed another stack of envelopes for us to practice on. I gave it a try, crafting a neat capital A and capital Y, each followed by a scribble of unintelligible letters. Like a game show prize model, I presented it to him.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Ooh! So fun! I like this!”
Yang tried it out himself while I watched over his shoulder, coaching him through the motions. “Yeah, so just make a really big ‘A’... yeah… ok… then scribble.... ok… big ‘Y’ now… ok... nice!”
Yang held it up. It was perfect.
***
When I joined the campaign on December 1st, 2017, three others were on the team — Muhan Zhang, Katie Bloom, and, of course, Andrew Yang.
When I had been obsessing over Venture for America (VFA) back in 2015, I had obsessively studied their admitted fellows with envy. Despite the prestigious crowd, Muhan stuck out as one of the most impressive. In his fellow photo, he donned a popular startup uniform — a navy blazer with a t-shirt — but Muhan’s shirt was horizontally striped in navy blue and white and paired with a dapper color-matched pocket square, which was less typical. His biography included such activities as making apps for Google Glass that measured neurological activity. Whenever I told family about the smart people in VFA, Muhan was always my first example. Even though we were about the same age, and I stood a full head taller than him, I couldn’t help but feel that I was out of my league in Muhan’s presence during my first few weeks.
Muhan was the first person Yang hired on to the campaign. He started in September 2017 while Yang was finishing The War on Normal People, and served as Yang’s “de-facto personal assistant.” After the book was completed, Muhan’s task list expanded to include keeping the entire campaign, its finances, operations, and website up and running. His business card came to humbly read “Muhan Zhang, tech guy.”
Katie, a writer and marketer in her early 30s, had worked with Yang at the VFA headquarters for years. Yang had recruited Katie to help him finish his book, and when it was done, she stuck around as a contractor to help with the campaign’s written material and “whatever else.” Katie had a big heart and was the most political among us helpers. A deeply empathetic activist, she was more aware of the nation’s struggles and passionate about reform than anyone else I knew at the time (yes, even more than Shelby!). In an already friendly environment, Katie’s warm spirit was especially contagious.
Despite her commitment, Katie’s contractor status meant she had less responsibility than an employee. She only worked a few days each week and eventually left in the spring of 2018 to work on her own projects. This left the formal accountability of the early campaign to be split between Muhan and me, with Muhan accountable for everything “internal”, and me accountable for everything “external.”
Our team often worked out of Yang’s mother’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. She had gone to Taiwan to visit family for most of the year, which left her home empty. Yang, being without a fragile ego, didn’t hesitate to have us meet there for convenience.
The apartment was cluttered in the way only a mother’s home can be. At 761 square feet, it was already a tight squeeze, but the rocking horse in the corner, old kids toys everywhere, and mounds of linens and pillows strewn about made it a hot mess. The clutter of the “office” was compounded by the fact that Yang had let Muhan live there in. Muhan also didn’t believe in washing out the coffee pot, ever, so the apartment always smelled extra musty.
We worked out of the living room and used the bedroom for calls. When all four of us were in the “office”, Yang would work at a small dinner table, Muhan at a desk, and Katie on the couch. I tended to just lie on the floor, the same way I used to play video games. Despite its oddities, the whole experience felt comfortable and safe.
The good vibes were amplified by the friendly faces I’d encounter during my morning routine. Each morning in Hell’s Kitchen, after my commute from Brooklyn, I’d visit my favorite food cart and get a bacon-egg-and-cheese on a croissant. I’d then be greeted at the building's entrance by the cheerful doorman in his Serbian accent, “Good moooorning Andrew! How are we today?”
I always responded, “Oh, you know, just another day in paradise!” and gave him a fist-bump.
I truly meant it — for someone who had fetishized startups, especially Steve Jobs’ launching of Apple from a garage, this was paradise. I was doing exactly what I had always dreamt of — changing the world with crazy ideas at the humble beginning.
***
We didn’t have much of a plan at the outset, but the one thing we knew was that we needed to build a movement. Yang would say, “The plan is to produce a real vision for the country and bring it to the people. That’s the whole plan.”
As an unknown outsider, the most beneficial thing Yang could have was time in the market. By announcing early, Yang would have a few important advantages. First, he’d have time to learn how to best present his message to American voters. Second, Yang would be able to hear the stories of real Americans, helping him see what problems were affecting people most. Third, Yang would have the necessary time to grow into the role of a candidate for president rather than his previous role as a CEO. Fortunately for me and the rest of the team, the extra time would also give us a chance to figure out what the hell politics was all about.
Other than the plan to announce early, all that was defined by the time I joined was which audiences we’d try to target as our earliest adopters — Asian-Americans, supporters of UBI, people who work in technology or startups, and young people. You can probably infer why we would select these audiences.
Unfortunately, in order to reach any of these people, we needed money, but we were an unlaunched organization staffed by people in their 20s. This meant that Yang bore the bulk of the fundraising responsibility — the only people Muhan, Katie and I knew were broke kids like us.
Two weeks after filing his candidacy for president, Yang’s worth as a salesman and politician was already being tested — he needed to prove his vision for the country was good enough that people would give him money to talk about it.
On one particular day in mid-December, Yang was preparing to make his first big official move as a candidate — sending an email announcing his candidacy to everyone he ever knew. Even though the email needed to go out that day, Yang was looking for distractions.
A few days before, a tin of cookies had been brought to us by a friend to celebrate the holiday season. Because they were gingersnaps, though, no one had eaten any yet. Yang popped the tin and grabbed a cookie.
Yang and I on the couch pushing it to the limit
I was sitting next to Yang on the small couch in the living room. I’m 6’4” and Yang is 6’0”, so any time the two of us ended up on the sofa, it was snug. On this occasion, when Yang sat down, his aim was a little off, so he ended up sitting on top of my left arm. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and I had no immediate path for escape, so that’s how we stayed. As he lifted the cookie to his mouth, ginger wafted through my nose. He munched away, crumbs falling on himself, emptily staring into his computer.
“How much money do you think we’ll raise, Yang?” Muhan asked from across the room, always on top of the numbers.
“I don’t know. That’s a good question,” Yang said, pausing to do the math in his head. “But I think we can do $10,000 a day for the next few weeks.”
We all nodded. It aligned with what I had expected. I had been telling friends and family that I estimated in a best-case scenario over the lifetime of the campaign we would raise about $5-10 million.
After Katie had reviewed Yang’s email for the 50th time, he hit send, screamed aloud, and waved his hands. We all joined. It was done.
Muhan put up an online fundraising dashboard on the living room T.V., programmed to make the sound of a ringing bell whenever a donation came in. We stared, awaiting riches. Slowly, the T.V. began to ring with those highly desired donation bells. It was really happening. By 6:00 p.m. we had raised the $10,000. Yang, happy, headed home.
A little while after Yang had gone, Katie went for a cookie.
“Oh my god! You guys! The cookies are gone!”
After Katie had also left, Muhan and I stayed up talking late into the night.
Despite initially feeling unnerved by working alongside one of VFA’s finest, it had only taken me and Muhan a few weeks to become the best of buddies. We bonded over our shared vision for the country and found brotherhood in our shared belief in living intentional lives that broke out of the system. Our discussion topics ranged from the importance of financial independence and traveling the world to the complexities of committing to love and how to best invest in personal growth.
Muhan, the son of Chinese immigrants, grew up in a suburb outside of Boston. His parents colored his early life with a risk-averse and waste-nothing mindset, one we came to jokingly refer to as “a mindset of scarcity.” Muhan would always finish his lunch, and yours, no matter how full he was. In school, he stuck to studying hard sciences, performed well, and came to approach the world from a lens of systems, processes, and measured infrastructure.
In contrast, he identified my upbringing and subsequent worldview as “a mindset of abundance.” He would say about me, to anyone who would listen, “This guy moved to San Francisco with two months of savings and no job or home.” “And then, while still jobless, he spent $1,000 on Google Ads in an attempt to recruit new drivers to UBER just so he could get that sweet, sweet referral bonus money. Can you believe that?? So much abundance!”
Muhan always seemed most comfortable when adhering, religiously, to processes. I was much more of a rule-breaker, and thought of process as something that hindered creativity. Fortunately, our working dynamic was never too burdened by this difference in style. Sure, we would have the occasional fight over a website wireframe fidelity, but Muhan deeply respected my creativity, and conversely, I had respect for his processes. We actively sought the other’s advice and point of view to counter-balance our own, and at different points were able to act as both student and teacher to one another.
When Muhan and I were not discussing abstract thoughts and approaches to life, we were probably obsessing over Yang. On this particular evening, after watching Yang send his big announcement email, we were appreciating Yang’s ridiculous appetite for risk, total disregard for humiliation, and willpower to manifest his visions.
As Muhan and I saw it, Yang had so much to lose, and so little to gain by running for president. At the time, Yang was little-known even in the field of non-profits. If things went poorly, professionally, he risked having a giant ‘do not touch’ bubble cast around him due to his “crazy ideas” or being stereotyped as a “communist.” Yang also had a wife and two young boys, so if this investment was a bust, he’d have burned through their savings and left his boys missing their father in their most critical years. He incurred all of this risk just to have a radically slim chance of maybe changing the conversation.
All of these major social pressures culminated in that email, which once sent, meant there was no going back. But he sent it. “What else are we going to do, just sit around and watch society disintegrate?” Yang would say.
Eating the whole tin of cookies was fair, Muhan and I agreed.
***
When I started on the campaign, my title was “Communications Manager.” The first responsibility bestowed upon me was taking over as Yang’s “de-facto personal assistant.” This was Muhan’s doing, and I suspect it was him pulling rank on me, because as I learned so intimately, being a personal assistant sucks royally.
I’m not the best at keeping track of many moving details, so working as Yang’s assistant was a doomed operation from the get-go. It wasn’t so bad at first, but once Yang sent that fundraising email, I would start my day with 60 messages, email and schedule meetings all day, and somehow manage to still have 60 messages when I left. Inevitably, something on the schedule would change, I’d get one stupid detail mixed up, and Yang would have two meetings at the same time. Every time I screwed up the calendar, I felt I was validating VFA’s decision to reject me.
When I wasn’t messing up Yang’s calendar, I was busy preparing our online platforms and marketing assets for launch. I worked hand-in-hand with Katie to get this done. Because of Katie’s years at VFA, she knew Yang’s mind, and would often save the day by pulling the words we needed right out of his head. Without her, our launch would have been a bust.
In those early days, we didn’t know when we were launching. Yang had agreed to announce his run in an exclusive story by the tech journalist Kevin Roose in the New York Times. This was exciting, but the downside was that he couldn’t tell us when it was going out. In the middle of December, we got the tip, “probably late January.” Completely undecided on our brand strategy with a quarter-baked website, we had a long way to go.
The first task was determining our brand and our image. The campaign’s brand is an extension of the campaign’s message, and the campaign’s message makes or breaks the campaign — in other words, this was a big deal. However, we just chatted it out through off-hand discussions while noshing on snacks.
We all believed in the idea of an unabashedly human and unpolished candidate, or as my father used to say, “a real frickin’ person.” Luckily, that’s exactly who Yang was, so we were able to lean into his authenticity to draw inspiration for the brand.
Additionally, we figured we’d need slight compensations for the challenges he’d face as an outsider candidate. I summarized our vision one night in my journal:
We have to brand him in every possible way as smart and full of facts and knowledge — which is true — but it must beam out in every pore of the campaign for people to buy into an idea so crazy. Also, he must be patriotic to counterbalance his lack of political experience.
As we dreamt up this vision of a candidate — smart, real, and full of facts — it seemed so obvious to us, and yet felt so contrary to the rest of the political arena.
Bringing this vision to life, though, was a challenge in and of itself. This is a common marketing hurdle, but it was exacerbated by Yang’s discomfort with putting himself front and center. He just wanted to solve the problems, not do a big self-promoting victory lap around the nation.
When I had joined, Yang, Muhan, and Katie had been exploring “UBI2020” as a brand, rather than the much more obvious “Yang2020.”
“It’s definitely weird, and it breaks the rules” admitted Katie, “but maybe it would be refreshing because it’s focused on solutions. What do you think?”
What did I think? I felt sharp pangs of doubt in the pit of my stomach. What do I really know? Who am I to tell them that I know better? My initial thought was that it was a bad idea. The alternative, though — a national campaign centered around Yang — made the man grimace.
“Hmm. Maybe… I’ll have to think about it. It’s definitely weird.”
I was spared from the humiliation of saying something dumb, when, a few days later, we got an email from Hannah White. Hannah was a VFA fellow and graphic designer who agreed to draft a professional brand book for us based on “UBI2020.” At the last moment, Yang had asked her to also explore a Yang2020 logo, “just to see.”
When Hannah sent us her drafts, we were obsessed with the Yang2020 logo.
“Wow! Is the ‘Y’ in Yang a flagpole?” I asked.
“No wait, I think the ‘Y’ is a soaring eagle,” replied Muhan.
“Oh my god. I think it’s both?” Said Katie.
Looking at the logo with his name on it, Yang’s eyes and smile were wide.
“Can we really brand ourselves as UBI2020 and waste this amazing logo?” I asked.
We discussed using both, but we agreed that would be a disaster. We had to pick one. Yang made the call.
“Yang2020!!” he exclaimed.
That was that — thanks to good timing and a pretty logo, we had a new brand, one centered around our real frickin’ person of a candidate.
Yang had made the right call. If we were to build a movement, we needed a clear leader. If we had used UBI2020, we’d have obfuscated and placed our leader out of the limelight. In order to succeed, Yang had to be front and center.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I remembered a quote from the wisest teacher of movements, Eric Hoffer, who wrote, “Once the stage is set, the presence of an outstanding leader is indispensable. Without him, there will be no movement.”
With our brand, colors, and logo now figured out, the last major item to decide on before we could finish the website was a slogan. Slogan brainstorming had served as one of our favorite distractions. Sitting in the living room, someone would suggest a preposterous idea, which was all it took to get us started.
“What about ‘Get Yangry’?” Muhan proposed one day, laughing heartily, leaning back in his desk chair. From the couch, I laughed in approval, looking up to see a grin forming on Yang’s face.
“Get Yangry, huh?” Yang said as he slowly rose from his chair. “You won’t like me when I’m...” he paused, turned towards his chair, and picked it up above his head, “Yangry!! Agh!”
Bowled over laughing, I offered, “What about ‘Make it Yang’?”
“Yes! ‘Make it Yang’ those Yangbucks!” Shouted Muhan, joining Yang in the small open floor space, throwing imaginary paper into the air.
When it came to serious discussions about the slogan, though, we struggled to find something that captured the brand. We chose 15 slogans to test, including “You’ve Earned It,” “End Poverty Now,” “Plenty for Many,” “Today Can be Better,” and “How Will You Spend It?” Each participant was asked to evaluate the slogan based on five criteria: if it sounded original, if it sounded corporate, if it actually meant something, if it spoke to today’s problems in the U.S, and if the participant would wear it on clothing.
All of the slogans elicited luke-warm responses, except one clear favorite— Humanity First.
“I don’t hate it,” I said, shrugging.
“At the end of the day, that’s basically the vision, isn’t it?” Muhan asked.
It’ll do, we agreed.
Between Muhan and me, neither of us had a single clue what political websites were supposed to look like. To figure out the best design, we employed two marketing theories. The first was my own idea — The Opposite Effect, and the second an old idea — Steal Like an Artist.
‘Stealing Like an Artist’ was coined by Austin Kleon. Though the idea predates him, he explains it best: “All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original … Every new idea is just a mashup or remix of one or more ideas.” The act of ‘stealing like an artist’ is the lifeblood of the entrepreneur, or the noobie, in this moment, we were both.
For the flow of our website, we copied from Bernie Sanders and MayDay PAC. As Muhan and I saw it, “these people have lots of money and probably tested what works so let’s do that.” There was one common theme, however, that absolutely confounded us.
“Why do they collect ZIP Codes with emails?” I asked.
Muhan furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t know. But they all do it.”
I scratched my chin. “Well, let’s do it too. There’s probably a reason.”
I later came to learn that presidential campaigns are completely built upon having the zip codes of their supporters. ZIP codes help with everything from messaging strategy to turning out the vote, but the most valuable thing, frankly, is knowing who to avoid wasting precious resources on — which basically anyone who doesn’t live in a swing state.
By late January, we were making good progress on our pre-launch goals — the website was nearing completion, and a few other big projects were being finished. For one, Katie and I had successfully filled Yang’s Wikipedia page with generous, uncited stories of his achievements and commitment to his family (which later got removed by the admins) as well as a link to our website (which the admins thankfully left up). I had also settled on social media usernames for the campaign, after discovering (and failing to bribe) a few kids in South Korea who already owned the handles ‘Yang2020’ and ‘AndrewYang’.
Yang was always immensely grateful to the three of us for being there and taking risks with him. He demonstrated that gratitude by taking us out to lunch nearly every day. We ate like kings/queens. We went to Indian buffets, lobster shacks, burger joints, Peruvian chicken houses, giant food courts, and even a Michelin star Chinese noodle house. Every day after lunch he would take us to a cookie shop called Schmackary’s. Yang would sing and dance the whole way there and buy us cookies, as big as our faces, to eat on the way back. We all put on weight, but it was worth it.
The mood was so good that we often found ourselves daydreaming and role-playing scenes of the future from the living room. One of those scenes took place in a world where the campaign didn’t work out, and our efforts devolved into a big performance art project. We imagined vivid scenes of Yang on rooftops, with lightning bolts striking in the distance as he benevolently thrust money onto the unknowing people below.
One day, we received a letter from our bank. They had misspelled Yang’s name on the envelope as “Andrew Yand.”
“Look at this letter,” Muhan laughed, “It’s addressed to Andrew Yand!”
“Andrew… Yand…?” Yang repeated. A joyful grin spread across his face, “I am Andrew Yand. Mr. Yand! President Yand!”
Muhan and I doubled over with laughter. Yang began performing a scene, playing the part of a supporter at a rally, chanting with fists clenched over his head, “Andrew Yand! Andrew Yand! Andrew Yand!”
We were in tears. The President Yand joke, which really shouldn’t have been funny at all, became such a hit that years later, we’d still sometimes address Yang as “President Yand.”
The infamous Andrew Yand letter
In those first two months, my view of Yang changed dramatically. When I first joined, I didn’t actually think we were trying to win. I assumed our whole focus was on the vision we shared — that society is headed full steam towards an era of unprecedented job loss caused by automation, and we needed a big movement in order to change the direction and avoid that impending trainwreck. “Surely,” I thought, “he can’t be crazy enough to be trying to win.”
Since I didn’t think we were trying to win, I had hardly researched Yang before I joined. I had been focused on determining if he was right about UBI, or if working in politics could really affect real change, but I had never asked myself if I actually believed Yang should be the president. In those few short months before we launched, though, not only did I realize Yang was truly in it to win it, but I began to believe in him as the best possible candidate to be president.
This revelation began quietly, on one insignificant day when Muhan was working on getting health care set up for the organization. Muhan had brought some options to Yang, and after listening to the first few, Yang interrupted him, “just pick whatever is the best for the staff.”
From there, I watched as Yang assembled his policies and described his visions for the country. I noticed that he always included and accounted for the Americans who most often get left behind — the working class, people of color, rural communities, people with autism, disabilities, and mental illnesses, Native Americans, and young people. Yang didn’t want to leave anybody out — his only agenda was a functional society that promoted human wellness for all humans. As president, I knew he would listen, care, make smart decisions, and be honest with the people. Unfortunately, that made him a rare and unique politician.
By the end of January, I had gone from an ambivalent associate to an undeniable, full-blown, true believer in Andrew Yang for president.
A week before our launch, Muhan and I were fawning over Yang late one evening as we so often did in those days. I was sitting on the couch when I had a moment of clarity that sent chills up my spine.
I looked at Muhan. “Dude… are we going to win?” I asked.
Muhan looked over at me with a look that was somehow both warm and deadly serious. Muhan had that sort of way about him, and was the kind of person who could be certain of his convictions and have his heart and mind open at the same time. He smiled.
“We are going to win, Frawley. There’s no doubt.” Muhan leaned back in his seat and nodded assuringly. “This is the man, and this is the moment.”
I sat back. I looked around at the cluttered apartment — at the rocking horse, at the empty tin of ginger snap cookies, at Muhan. It all seemed so incredibly impossible, so unobtainable, and yet the path was so clear. America was so desperate for something different that they had elected a racist reality TV star as president. There was a lane for Yang’s victory. Yang was the guy America actually wanted, and once they discovered him, they’d feel exactly what I was feeling right then — fullness, excitement, and awe.
Then it hit me.
Oh my god. All we need to do is get him into the conversation and we’ll win.
***
It was time to get serious when the NYT reached out to us with an official date for launch: February 9th. They also said they were going to send a photographer to our office to have a photoshoot. What’s the address of your office?
We all laughed, then paused.
“But we should actually figure something out,” Yang said, “While the story of starting in mom’s apartment will be heart-warming in the future, it’s a bad look right now.”
“Absolutely,” agreed Muhan.
“Okay, who’s got an idea?” Yang asked.
Crickets. Katie narrowed her eyes as if thinking very hard. Muhan tapped his foot and looked around the room. No one knew how to take our poor excuse for an office and turn it into a legitimate operation overnight. Then it hit me.
“What if we just fake it?”
Everyone looked up at me, confused. “Fake it, how?” Muhan asked.
“You know, just pretend we have an office somewhere. We can rent one online, with Breather.com. It’s totally legit. Look at some of these places!” I said, pulling up a web page of listings on my laptop.
The team gathered around to look at the available offices.
“Wow, look,” Katie said, “you can even filter the offices by which ones have the best natural lighting for photography!”
Yang laughed and clapped his hands loudly. “I love the hustle! Let’s do it.”
We settled on a modern-looking space in lower Manhattan. It was small, but still needed more than our four bodies to fill it. We invited a few friends and contractors to hang out with us for a couple of hours to make it look like we had a real staff.
The morning of, Muhan and I packed up boxes of old papers, obscure books, jackets, and even some trash. Upon arrival, we hid all of the rental signs, threw our belongings around, and artistically filled each garbage bin as if it were a sculpture at MoMA.
We had just gotten everyone into their places and had stepped back to admire our work when the NYT photographer called me, “We’re out front.”
“Okay, it’s happening people!” Katie announced.
I ran down to let in the photographer, but as I passed the front desk, my heart stopped. I realized that all guests needed to be checked in, and our cover would be blown the moment the photographer heard me say “breather rental room 2388.”
I raced back upstairs and grabbed Katie. I filled her in on the plan as we scurried down the stairs two at a time. After greeting the photographer and his assistant, Katie flawlessly distracted them in conversation, her warmth melting them to putty in her hands. I leaned over and whispered “breather rental room 2388” to the security guard without either of the NYT photographers noticing. We shuffled them into the office, they set up their gear, took some business-titan-like portraits of Yang, and left, entirely unsuspecting. Everything had gone off without a hitch.
“Well done, team,” Yang said. “Anyone else hungry for a cookie?”
Yang (second to the left), Katie (center), me (second from the right), and two friends (on the edges) in our rented office.
As we neared launch time, I needed to log into Yang’s Instagram account as it would soon be my job to manage his social media. Once logged in, I looked at his account. 300 followers, seven photos — less than my mother. “Alrighty then,” I thought.
We all found ourselves tapping our feet a little extra in those final, golden days. We were anxious to finally understand what we had ahead of us. Would we launch, blow up, and cruise our way to victory? Would we launch, become a joke, and head home by April?
We likened ourselves to be realists. On a whiteboard, we wrote our first fundraising goal: March 31st: $500,000.