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case study: How do you fuck up the greatest opportunity on the planet? It’s a tragedy bounded by greed.

Whatever else Bales was, he was a true believer. He had plowed a lot of his fortune into shares in the company, even borrowing $100,000 from Amram to invest more, and he worked without a salary. “I gave everything I had to Napster,” Bales said. He met with some potential Napster investors without Richardson knowing. When he was found out, he begged Richardson not to fire him. More than once, Bales broke down in tears as he asked Richardson to give him another chance. Still a soft touch, she did each time. His continued presence was hard on many of the Napster faithful, including Jessie Garrehy, who sat a dozen feet from Bales in the Xtime office. Bales was spreading a rumor about an evening of excess shared by Garrehy, Richardson, and John Lee. After Garrehy found out and confronted Bales, she cockily told her that since it was true, it didn’t matter. Back at her desk, Garrehy picked up a full mug of coffee and hurled it at Bales. The mug struck the wall between Xtime and Napster and exploded in pieces.

Richardson was outraged by Bales’s schemes and by the gossip. But the final straw came only after Ali Aydar and Ritter had too much. The engineers told their boss, Kessler, that they would quit if Bales wasn’t gotten rid of immediately. Kessler had already warned Richardson that Bales and Fanning were plotting to get rid of her, and Aydar and Ritter convinced him that now was the time to act. “If he doesn’t leave, I’m leaving too,” Kessler told Richardson. Informed of the situation by Richardson, Bales figured Ritter was a hopeless case, since he was dating Garrehy. He thought his best shot was to turn Aydar around, which might sway Kessler.

Bales blasted off a desperate e-mail to Aydar, copying Richardson, John Fanning, Amram, Shawn, and Kessler. “I was told by Eileen that you were walking if I didn’t leave the company by 5 p.m.,” Bales wrote just after that hour on Friday, December 17. “I’ve gone back over all my e-mails with you, and they stand as proof of my feelings for you. It was a shock to hear Eileen say this . . . but I’m open-minded enough to hear your side of the story.” Then Bales attacked the company itself, voicing legitimate gripes shared by others but also displaying much of his special