Chapter 27: The Salesman
Lee Marcus found Daniel before Daniel found him, which was not part of the plan.
It happened in the SNU student cafeteria on a Tuesday afternoon in April. Daniel was eating a bowl of jjajangmyeon and reviewing his portfolio on his phone—Samsung had crossed 780,000 won, and the numbers were making his noodles taste even better—when a tray slammed down across from him with the confidence of a man who had never considered the possibility that his company might not be wanted.
“You’re Cho Daniel,” the tray-slammer said. He was tall, sharp-jawed, with the kind of smile that belonged on a billboard. His clothes were casual but deliberately so—the studied effortlessness of someone who understood that in Korea, looking like you didn’t try was its own form of trying. “Business Administration. The kid who predicted the financial crisis.”
Daniel set down his chopsticks. “Who’s asking?”
“Lee Marcus. Marketing, sophomore.” He sat without being invited, folding himself into the plastic chair with the easy grace of a man who assumed all chairs were made for him. “I’ve heard about you.”
“From who?”
“Everyone. You’re the freshman who made twenty million won in the stock market during the worst crash in thirty years. That’s not the kind of story that stays quiet.” Marcus pulled a pair of chopsticks from the dispenser, broke them apart with a practiced snap, and began eating from his own tray—bibimbap, which he mixed with the vigorous efficiency of someone who treated even lunch as a task to be optimized. “I want to know how you did it.”
“I studied the market and made informed decisions.”
“That’s the boring answer. What’s the real one?”
“That is the real one.”
“Nobody our age makes twenty million won through ‘informed decisions.’ Hedge fund managers with thirty years of experience lost money in 2008. You’re nineteen. Either you’re a genius, you got insanely lucky, or you know something nobody else does.” Marcus pointed his chopsticks at Daniel—a gesture that was either rude or charismatic, depending on the delivery. Marcus made it charismatic. “Which is it?”
All three, technically. But I can’t tell you that.
“Why do you care?” Daniel asked.
“Because I’m looking for someone to start a business with, and you’re the most interesting person on this campus.” Marcus said it with the same casual certainty he used for everything—as if stating a fact rather than making a proposition. “I’ve been at SNU for a year and a half. I’ve met a lot of smart people. Smart people are common here. What’s uncommon is someone who can actually do something with their smartness. You did something. That makes you interesting.”
Daniel studied the man across from him. Lee Marcus. In his first life, Marcus had been the CMO of Nexus Technologies—the marketing genius who had turned a good product into a cultural phenomenon. He’d built campaigns that won international awards. He’d convinced Samsung to partner with a startup when Samsung didn’t partner with startups. He’d been, by any measure, brilliant.
He’d also been the easiest of the three to recruit, because Marcus always understood the value of being in the right room at the right time.
“What kind of business?” Daniel asked.
Marcus grinned. It was the grin of a man who had just gotten a yes to a question he hadn’t formally asked. “I don’t know yet. That’s the honest answer. I know I want to build something. I know I want it to be in tech—that’s where the growth is. And I know I can sell anything to anyone, but I need a product to sell and a team to build it.”
“You need a product person.”
“I need a product person and a money person. You’re the money person. Now I need the product person.”
“I might know someone,” Daniel said. The image of Sarah in the basement lab, typing at inhuman speed with a cat video paused on one screen, flashed through his mind. “A computer science student. She’s… intense.”
“Intense is good. Intense means she cares.”
“Intense means she might throw a monitor at you if you interrupt her at 2 AM.”
“I’ve been thrown at before. It builds character.” Marcus leaned back and crossed his arms. “Cho Daniel. I’m going to be direct, because I don’t believe in wasting time. I’ve spent a year looking for the right people. People who want to build something real, not just pad their resumes for Samsung or LG or whatever chaebol their parents want them to work for. I think you’re one of those people.”
“Based on what? You just met me.”
“Based on the fact that you’re nineteen and you have twenty million won in the stock market instead of a PlayStation and a drinking habit. That tells me everything I need to know about your priorities.” He stood, picking up his tray. “Think about it. I’m in the Marketing building, room 302, most afternoons. Come find me when you’re ready to stop thinking and start doing.”
He walked away with the tray, deposited it at the return station with a nod to the cafeteria ajumma, and was gone.
Daniel sat with his cooling jjajangmyeon and felt the second piece of the puzzle slide into place.
Lee Marcus. In my first life, I found him through a mutual friend at a networking event. It took three months of persuasion. This time, he found me in a cafeteria.
Some things are faster the second time around.
He told Sarah about Marcus the following week, during their now-regular 2 AM coffee session in Lab B-204.
“No,” Sarah said, without looking up from her code.
“You didn’t even hear what I’m proposing.”
“You’re proposing that I meet a marketing major who wants to ‘start a business.’ I’ve heard that pitch seventeen times this semester. The answer is always no.”
“This one is different.”
“They’re all different. They’re all the same kind of different.” She hit a key with unnecessary force. “Business students come to the CS building like missionaries. They have a ‘vision’ and they need a ‘technical co-founder’ and they’ll give me ‘equity’ in a company that doesn’t exist yet. Meanwhile, I’m trying to finish a distributed systems project that could actually advance human knowledge.”
“Marcus isn’t like that.”
“Everyone says that about the person they’re pitching.”
“I’m not pitching you anything. I’m asking you to have coffee with someone.”
“I’m having coffee with you right now. That fills my social quota for the week.”
“Sarah.”
She stopped typing. Turned to face him. The lab was dark except for the monitor glow, and in the blue-white light, her expression was all angles and skepticism.
“Why do you care?” she asked. “You’re a business major. You have your stock market money. You could go work at any investment firm in Korea. Why do you want to start a company?”
Because in my first life, I started a company with you, and it became worth four billion dollars, and it was the best thing I ever did. Because without you, there is no Nexus Technologies. There is no cloud platform, no AI division, no fifteen thousand employees. There’s just a guy with a stock portfolio and a dream that stays a dream.
“Because I don’t want to work for someone else’s vision,” Daniel said. “I want to build something that changes how people use technology. And I can’t do that alone. I need someone who can build the things I can only imagine.”
“Flattery.”
“Fact. Your distributed systems work is two years ahead of anything else in Korea. Your code is clean, efficient, and—”
“You read more of my code?”
“I’ve read everything you’ve published. And some things you haven’t published that are in the SNU CS department’s internal repository.”
“How did you access the internal—”
“Soyeon has methods.”
Sarah stared at him. Then, despite herself, she laughed. Not a big laugh—Sarah didn’t do big laughs—but a genuine one, surprised out of her by the absurdity of a business freshman casually admitting to having a law student hack into a CS department repository to read code.
“You’re insane,” she said.
“That’s been established.”
“Fine. One coffee. With the marketing person. If he uses the word ‘synergy’ even once, I’m leaving.”
“Deal.”
“And Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell your law student friend to stay out of our repository. The sysadmin is going to notice eventually.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
The meeting happened at a cafe near Gwanak Station—neutral territory, away from campus, where the coffee was slightly better than vending machine quality and the tables were far enough apart for a private conversation.
Daniel arrived first and ordered three Americanos. Sarah arrived second, wearing the same hoodie from the lab, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. Marcus arrived third, somehow already smiling, as if he’d been born mid-grin.
“Yoon Sarah,” Marcus said, extending his hand. “I’ve heard you’re a genius.”
“I’ve heard you’re a salesman,” Sarah replied, not taking his hand. “I don’t trust salesmen.”
“Smart. Most salesmen aren’t trustworthy.” Marcus withdrew his hand without missing a beat. “But I’m not most salesmen. I’m the kind who tells you upfront that I’m selling you something, so you can decide with full information.”
“And what are you selling?”
“The idea that the three of us could build something extraordinary. Not because we’re special individually—SNU is full of special individuals. But because our skills don’t overlap. Daniel understands money and strategy. I understand markets and people. You understand technology. That combination is rare.”
Sarah looked at Daniel. “Is he always like this?”
“I’ve known him for a week. So far, yes.”
“God help us.” Sarah picked up her Americano, sipped it, and made a face that was marginally less disgusted than her reaction to vending machine coffee. “Okay, Marcus. You have ten minutes. Pitch me.”
“I don’t pitch. Pitching is for people who aren’t confident in their product.” Marcus leaned forward. “Instead, I’ll ask you a question. What’s the biggest problem you see in Korean tech right now?”
Sarah didn’t hesitate. “Infrastructure. Korean companies are building applications on top of garbage infrastructure. Their servers crash, their data gets lost, their scaling is nonexistent. Every company in Korea needs a cloud platform, and nobody is building one that works.”
“Why not?”
“Because building cloud infrastructure is hard. Really hard. It requires distributed systems expertise that most Korean developers don’t have, because the education system teaches application development, not infrastructure. The companies that could build it—Samsung, LG, SK—are too busy chasing consumer products to care about enterprise infrastructure.”
“So there’s a gap.”
“A massive gap. And it’s going to get worse as mobile internet grows and every business needs online presence.”
Marcus looked at Daniel. “Can we fund building a cloud platform?”
“Not now,” Daniel said. “We’d need at least 500 million won in seed capital, plus eighteen months of development time. But in two years, with the portfolio growing and the right investors, yes.”
“Two years.” Marcus turned back to Sarah. “In two years, would you be ready to build it?”
Sarah was quiet. Her fingers wrapped around the coffee cup, tapping against the ceramic. Not Soyeon’s three-tap rhythm—Sarah’s taps were irregular, arrhythmic, the percussion of a mind that processed information non-linearly.
“You’re asking me to commit to something that doesn’t exist yet,” she said.
“I’m asking you to commit to the possibility of something. That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“A commitment to something means you’ve decided. A commitment to possibility means you’re willing to explore. I’m not asking you to sign a contract. I’m asking you to keep talking to us.” Marcus smiled—not the billboard smile from the cafeteria, but something more real. Quieter. “One coffee a week. That’s all. If after a few months you think we’re wasting your time, you walk away. No hard feelings.”
Sarah looked at Daniel. “Is this how he got you?”
“He slammed his tray down in the cafeteria and told me I was interesting.”
“That worked?”
“I was eating jjajangmyeon. My defenses were down.”
Sarah almost-smiled. Almost. Then she set down her cup with a definitive click.
“One coffee a week,” she said. “Tuesdays. Not at 2 AM. And if either of you says the word ‘synergy,’ I’m done.”
“Deal,” Marcus said.
“Deal,” Daniel said.
They shook on it—three hands, three futures, converging over bad Americanos in a cafe near Gwanak Station while the April rain streaked the windows and the city hummed with ten million people who had no idea that the company that would eventually reshape Korean technology had just been born, informally, in the space between a handshake and a coffee cup.
Sarah. Marcus. And me.
The original three. Together again, for the first time.
This time, I won’t let it fall apart.