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Grosfeld had never seen one. Bales put Grosfeld off, saying he couldn't work up a cap table yet because he didn't know who was investing in the new round. Grosfeld said that was fine; Bales could just show him the one reflecting the status quo. Bales, himself a large shareholder, said he ought to be able to put one together if Grosfeld came out to visit. Or, he said, John Fanning would fax Grosfeld one. Right, Grosfeld thought. He laughed out loud.

With low expectations, Grosfeld nonetheless decided it was worth the trip to see if Richardson and the others had wrested control from Fanning and if they had sorted out the legal issues. Parker picked him up at the San Jose airport, and on the way north through Silicon Valley, he filled Grosfeld in on the events of the previous three months. “These guys are totally in the dark about Fanning,” Grosfeld thought. “Eileen and Bales have no clue.” When he arrived at Napster, Bales still didn't have a cap table to show Grosfeld, who assumed the worst. “I don't think you understand the ownership of this company,” Grosfeld told Bales and Richardson in the conference room. He said he wouldn't invest unless they gained control of Napster in the new round, and Bales assured him they would. Grosfeld said he didn't believe them, and he recounted Fanning's negotiation games. “I kind of spilled the beans about my experience,” he recalled. When he was through, Richardson just stared, her jaw literally hanging open. Bales got up and walked to his nearby office, put his feet up on his desk, and dropped his head in his hands, not emerging even to tell Grosfeld goodbye. Grosfeld drove to see Amram before leaving, and they chatted amicably. “Keep me in mind if you get things straight,” Grosfeld said, and he flew home.

There was a natural tension in Bales's job, even if he did it correctly. In addition to seeking investors, he was on the lookout for a CEO that could replace his boss. It was a delicate proposition, made all but impossible when Bales mixed the two overtures. If he was interested in a potential funder whom he also saw as a potential CEO, he was essentially asking that person to invest in a company whose management needed changing—not the most assured of come-ons. And at times Bales may have overstressed the point about the need for a new CEO. One of Bales's multipurpose targets was Peter Macnee, who headed a New York Internet firm called FortuneCity.com Inc. Like dozens of its competitors,

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