The glass doors of DoubleClick HQ slid open with a whisper, the air-conditioned interior a sharp contrast to the late summer heat outside. James stepped through, the hum of the office washing over him—keyboard clatter, the murmur of hushed discussions, the occasional burst of laughter from a nearby workstation. The scent of fresh coffee and printer ink hung in the air, mixing with the faint metallic tang of the server room down the hall.
He moved through the open-plan workspace, his shoes clicking against the polished concrete floor. To his left, a cluster of designers huddled around a monitor, arguing over the latest ad placement algorithm. To his right, a whiteboard was covered in a chaotic sprawl of equations, a young engineer frowning at it like it had personally offended him. The energy was electric—the kind of restless, creative chaos that came with a company still riding the high of a successful launch.
James nodded at a few familiar faces as he passed, exchanging quick greetings—"Morning, Sarah," "Looking good, Mark,"—before making his way toward the executive wing. His reflection flickered in the glass walls as he walked, the fluorescent lights casting sharp shadows under his eyes.
Marcus's office door was ajar, the man himself hunched over his desk, his brow furrowed in concentration. A half-empty cup of black coffee sat at his elbow, long gone cold. The glow of his monitor reflected in his glasses, painting his face in pale blue light.
James rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. "Morning."
Marcus looked up, blinking as if surfacing from deep thought. A slow grin spread across his face. "Speak of the devil. I was just about to call you." He gestured at the screen. "Got the latest numbers."
James stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind him. The office was small but meticulously organized—a standing desk, a whiteboard covered in scribbled projections, a framed photo of Marcus's dog on the shelf. He leaned against the edge of the desk, arms crossed. "How's business?"
Marcus opened a file and turned the screen toward James. "This is August 14th through the 23rd. First full week since launch. Three products live. Big partner logos inked, but no campaign spend yet."
James folded his arms, eyes on the screen.
"AdNova ET brought in $225,000," Marcus said, tapping a line on the display. "Three enterprise clients. Each paid the $100K license, plus about $25K in outlet and support fees. That's $75K per client."
James gave a slow nod. "Upfront, no haggling?"
"None. Our positioning did the work. Enterprise-grade tech, future-proof, exclusive onboarding slots. They were more worried about missing out."
Marcus scrolled down. "AdNova SS brought in $80,000. About 1,000 small businesses signed up—850 on Basic at $49, and 150 went Premium at $149. That alone's $64K, plus upsells and trial conversions rounded it out."
James smirked faintly. "Not bad for a product that barely existed a month ago."
"Alliance surprised me," Marcus admitted. "We signed 30 media partners early. No inventory sold yet—just membership. But we offered a $3,000 early access fee, limited time. That's $90,000, clean."
"And margins?"
"ET's at 60%," Marcus said, scrolling to the bottom. "SS is around 45%. Alliance? 80%—basically all profit."
James tilted his head, thinking.
"So all together," Marcus concluded, "we brought in $395,000. Profit came out to $243,000. No media spend, no integrations, just licensing, early SMB traction, and the Alliance hype effect."
James exhaled through his nose, his eyes flicking across the figures again.
Marcus nodded. "They haven't even started integration. But just signing them brought credibility. It's driving inbound like wildfire."
James exhaled. "ET and SS are the workhorses. No surprise there."
He tapped the paper, his voice dropping. "But this—" His finger landed on the Alliance line. "This is the foundation. Without media partners, we're just selling ads in a vacuum. No scale. No credibility."
Marcus nodded. "Exactly. That's why I've got the team reaching out to local papers, regional radio, mid-tier TV—places that need reach but still have hyper-local audiences."
"Good," James said, folding the report in half. "Don't ease up. The real moat is in the network. We can scale ET and SS all we want, but without Alliance, we're just another ad platform."
Marcus smirked. "Noted, boss."
James pushed off the desk, tucking the report under his arm. "Keep it up. I'll check in later."
As he stepped back into the hallway, his mind was already racing. The numbers were strong—better than he'd expected. But the real challenge wasn't the revenue. It was the infrastructure to sustain it.
Time to visit the tech team.
-----------------
James stepped into the technical wing of the building, where the air was a few degrees warmer and carried the faint hum of running fans and processors. Rows of metal racks lined the server room beyond the glass wall—some blinking with green and amber lights, others half-filled, cables draping like vines in an electric jungle.
Dr. Ethan Caldwell was crouched near the back of the room, sleeves rolled up, hands deep inside the casing of a newly installed tower. Two engineers flanked him, passing tools and screwing panels shut like a pit crew at work.
"Ethan," James called over the mechanical din, "you have a second?"
Ethan looked up, wiped his hands on a rag, and held up a finger. "One minute—just need to finish this connection."
James nodded and stepped back, letting his eyes wander around the server room. The growth was visible—new machines had been added since his last visit, and the room now looked more like a start-up data center than a back-office tech hub. A rack in the corner was labeled FeedNode Alpha, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Ethan finally approached, brushing metal filings off his shirt. "Sorry about that. What's up?"
James gestured to the room. "You've been busy."
Ethan gave a tired chuckle. "We've added storage, cleaned pipelines, optimized retrieval queues—but it's not enough. We're hitting bottlenecks almost every other day. The traffic from Alliance partners alone is generating more data than we projected."
He paused, eyes scanning the room with professional irritation.
"What we need isn't more shelves to stack drives on. We need custom-built servers—designed for parallel I/O, high-throughput clustering, fast redundancy cycles. And we need them fast. Otherwise, we're duct-taping a Formula One engine to a lawnmower chassis."
James stepped closer, glancing at the current setup. "You're right. This won't scale. What we need… is a data center."
Ethan's expression eased with relief. "Exactly. I was actually going to bring it up. Oracle has enterprise database solutions that—"
"No," James cut him off gently but firmly. "We don't hand over our data. Not to Oracle. Not to anyone."
Ethan blinked. "But their—"
James shook his head. "We build in-house. I'll handle it."
He turned away from Ethan and let his thoughts run ahead of his body, pacing slowly down the corridor. The hum of the servers faded into the background as he sank into a moment of silent clarity.
Data is everything.People don't realize it yet. But soon—sooner than anyone thinks—it will be the most valuable resource in the world.
He folded his arms, staring through the glass at the humming servers.
1. Data drives decisions.Businesses will use it to predict what customers want before they even know it. Governments will use it to run cities, hospitals, schools.
2. Data powers technology.Without data, there's no machine learning. No AI. No personalization. No predictive modeling. The smartest software on Earth is blind without it.
3. Data equals money.Google, Amazon, Facebook—soon to be empires built on behavioral tracking and ad revenue. We've only scratched the surface.
4. Data is a competitive edge.Whoever has the better dataset wins. Period. The one who knows the customer, the market, the pattern—that's the one who survives.
5. Data is the backbone of the digital economy.Cloud services, IoT, streaming, even social media—it's all just plumbing for one thing: information.*
James exhaled sharply.
It's not just about storage. It's about sovereignty. We must own the entire stack—hardware, software, intelligence. No outsourcing. No middlemen.
A sly smile tugged at his lips.
Looks like I need to start another company...Let's hope Lillian doesn't kill me.
He turned back to Ethan, eyes clear now.
"Start designing the specs for what we need. Rack configurations, cooling, power. Don't worry about budget."
Ethan's eyes widened. "You're serious?"
"I'm deadly serious," James said. "We're not just storing data. We're protecting the future."