The Great American Saloon Series/The Lion and Compass
Stein, Benjamin J.
THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES
THE LION AND COMPASS
by Benjamin J. Stein
To begin at the beginning, try not to think about the tasteless dill sauce, the cooked-out vegetables, or the nondescript...
...financing's all set and he doesn't care if he's fired...
...Can you believe it...
...Both are drinking milk...
...Is he capitalized yet...
...As for the decor, the more imitative the better...
...He gets seventy-five hundred an hour," says Paul Solomon, "and he's worth every penny...
...Ideas turn into companies and into nothing again really fast," he says...
...Wait until seven o'clock," says the bartender...
...She must be new in town...
...Out in the parking lot, a valet in running sweats brings up the battered Pon-tiac station wagon of the man with the optical telephone link that'll let you dial your numbers by talking to the goddamned telephone...
...See that man over there...
...It seems like a million years ago...
...Food is not what The Lion and Compass is all about...
...That's so no one will see him...
...But when he's got everything in the bag and he's not worried about who sees him, when he wants people to see him with the money people from Bessemer or Citicorp, this is exactly where he comes...
...Who the hell cares as long as the food doesn't kill you...
...Rothschild, is if the Benjamin J. Stein is a writer and producer in Hollywood...
...If she wants to meet somebody, she'd be better off at the Electrical Engineers' meetings at the Marriott...
...When an engineer has a really big idea," says Nolan Bushnell, who is on the run to Aspen, stealing french fries off an investment banker's plate (and shouting "bitesies" like a frat brother), "he first has secret meetings in a place nobody important ever goes, like some of those places with funny names like The Rusty Scupper and Charlie Brown's...
...Oh, absolutely," says Joe Heinrich...
...She doesn't know that engineers never stay here that long...
...You won't even have to move...
...It gets up to 32-bit speed again by then...
...That's when you have to stop your whole assembly because the chips aren't coming in right, and that guy comes over at four in the morning and fixes the automated silicon deposition machinery...
...In two weeks that guy will be the CEO of his own company and in a year, if the optical link gets picked up by GTE and AT&T, his company'll be worth as much as Chrysler...
...Joe Heinrich takes a sip of the California White Wines for which the chef assures him The Lion and Compass is famous...
...one asks...
...Copper conductivity...
...They get in early and they go home early so they can work in their garages making new circuits and starting their own companies...
...We don't care about a fresh John Dory here," Joe Heinrich adds...
...It just has to look right, and The Lion and Compass looks perfect...
...You remember on the Titan, how the guidance was by circuit boards...
...says a man at the table, stretching his imagination to its utter limits...
...One good match-up with a venture capital firm, and they've got another Apple...
...When the engineer meets the money, it's like owning a mint for both of them, unless somebody else makes them obsolete...
...That's what the Silicon Valley's for...
...At the bar, at two o'clock, by which time the restaurant is completely empty, an attractive woman wanders in for a Tab...
...Jesus," she says, "this place is as slow as an 8-bit chip...
...If he came here with that guy," and now Joe Heinrich points at the man with the guy wearing the nerdpack, who wears a dark blue suit from Paul Stuart and an Egyptian cotton shirt from Tripler, "who just screams 'venture capital,' his boss would find out about it in two seconds and fire him...
...Try three hundred million over ten years, for him personally," says Heinrich...
...J erry Sanders, who started Advanced Micro Devices in his hat (annual sales in 1983, $400 million), says the Silicon Valley needs The Lion and Compass...
...asks Joe Heinrich, an integrated-circuit designer, pointing at a little fellow in a polyester shirt with full white plastic nerdpack shielding the fabric from ball-point pen ink and a badge with his picture on it...
...You can't waste your time worrying about the sauce on the sole or you just get buried alive...
...Do not waste a moment of your time thinking that the lentil soup is less tasty than a glass of ice water...
...Everybody's thinking so hard that he can't even taste the food anyway...
...That's why The Lion and Compass works here...
...The only way he'd possibly come here with that guy, who I think is from L.F...
...One good idea, one good design, and they're as rich as a Rockefeller cousin...
...The Lion and Compass was founded by Atari-founder Nolan Bushnell to be the forum for just such deals...
...Neither one looks old enough to be out of graduate school...
...This" has a bar flown over from England, a library, ditto, a regulation gray-walled room, and a "garden room" with sash windows overlooking a parking lot...
...This place," says Paul Solomon, a colleague of Nolan Bushnell, who owns most of The Lion and Compass, "is where the money meets the ideas...
...Engineers eat early," says Nolan Bushnell...
...Look at these people," he says, gesturing around with a giant hand at the mixture of Madison Avenue tailoring and J.C...
...Food may be important in some more slow-moving, better-established places in New York City or Los Angeles, but it is not even in the running in the Silicon Valley, and the Silicon Valley is what The Lion and Compass definitely is about...
...That fellow and his next door neighbor have a patent on an optical link that can digitalize voice commands to a telephone...
...In fact, the wine is excellent, but that is not why anyone is there...
...It is a place where the food is nothing special, the decor is wildly derivative, but the deals that will define the future get made every day...
...Just what," Joe Heinrich asks, "do you think that's worth...
...The damned thing's gonna make it possible to just talk to your phone and tell your phone what number you want...
...Now everything's IC's...
...The place is packed by noon, and fairly well filled by eleven-thirty...
...Penney catalogue ready-to-wear...
...The food doesn't matter...
...Back at the bar, the woman lights a cigarette and looks at the empty "library" room...
...A million dollars...
...Yeah, we're getting old," says his partner...
...They know what's important is that they're part of the race track, not the refreshment stand...
...asks the second man...
...There's no way on earth that he'd dare to come here to this place if he didn't already have the venture capital completely in the bag...
...There has to be some center," he says, "some place where I can take grad students who are hot and let them know I'm spending money on them, some place where people from Hitachi can come and feel like they're being shown a good time, most of all a place where the entrepreneurs can go to let people know they've made it...
...That guy's too busy to buy a Mercedes, too busy to worry about gourmet food...
...THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES THE LION AND COMPASS by Benjamin J. Stein To begin at the beginning, try not to think about the tasteless dill sauce, the cooked-out vegetables, or the nondescript fruit...
...Plus, the right people come here, and that's really all anyone wants to see...
...On a recent Friday, a table of men from the Financial News Network were grilling a bearded man about techniques of "IC-surgery...
...At another table, two engineer/entrepreneurs were doing some heavy-duty reminiscing...
...Lunch begins early at The Lion and Compass...
...I really miss those old days...
...That's really rare," says the bartender...
Vol. 18 • March 1985 • No. 3
