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board members Yosi, Eileen and Hank can vote to expand the board and elect John Hummer,” the memo said. Fanning had 4.6 million shares. So the Hummer Winblad team and Richardson counted and recounted the votes. The Gidwitz clan had 895,000 Junior shares and were likely loyal to Fanning. But if Conway’s fund called in a $250,000 loan to Fanning, for which he had pledged 312,000 shares as collateral, the odds improved. Richardson and Barry figured they could get Shawn’s 2.7 million shares, Ali Aydar’s 80,000, and the votes of Kessler, Parker, Ritter, and a handful of others. They calculated they could get to 6.39 million votes, 247,596 more than they needed. But there was a catch: They couldn’t get there without Bill Bales and his 1 million shares. And Richardson had terminated Bales, who had then started business dealings with Fanning.

Richardson thought she could still swing Bales, who was oblivious to his role as potential kingmaker. But it was a conversation she didn’t want to have. And it wasn’t clear the scheme would hold up in court. Instead, she and Amram talked to Fanning over and over in the next few weeks to persuade him to support the Hummer Winblad investment. His vetoes had cost Napster offers from the other firms as the market was at its peak. Now that things were sliding, even Fanning began to see that Hummer might be the last chance for him to cash out. He agreed orally to the deal.

As the lawyers for both sides worked on the final contract, Richardson still worried that Fanning was out looking for something better. And on the May day that the Hummer agreement was set to close, she believed, he was in Los Angeles negotiating with potential investors, though she never found out for sure. Richardson didn’t know how to reach Fanning, and she was afraid he would reverse himself again, just as he had with Kleiner Perkins. She grabbed Shawn and Parker and shoved them toward the conference room. “Find your uncle!” she ordered them.

Panicked but used to being panicked, Shawn and Parker agreed on a strategy. They would have to flatter Fanning, telling him he would prove himself a visionary by agreeing to the Hummer deal. They needed him to feel essential, and they would stress that unlike the other deals, Fanning could stay on the board. “We had to convince him that he was a seasoned entrepreneur and a respected, benevolent leader. At the same time, we somehow had to get his subconscious to understand he would be missing out on the money if he didn’t do it,” Parker said. Shawn got his uncle on