After answering a few more burning questions, Nick finally escaped to his waiting SUV under the tight escort of his team. Although he'd done a handful of interviews before, none had been quite as feral as this one. It made sense; he'd been all over the news lately, and with the H1 assistant practically taking over the world, he was the tech media's favorite target.
In reality, he absolutely detested being in front of a camera. Given a choice, he'd gladly hole up in his lab for months on end doing R&D. To him, nothing compared to the thrill of cracking a complex engineering problem or unearthing a fresh line of code.
But circumstances had forced his hand, leaving him with no choice but to bite the bullet and play the public-facing CEO. It was a shifting landscape; more and more founders and lead developers were stepping up to the microphone to pitch their own products directly to consumers. Meanwhile, traditional, multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns were slowly going extinct.
The founder-led approach had an obvious advantage: it felt authentic, technical, and built a genuine connection with the user base. More importantly, it was incredibly cheap. Hiring an A-list celebrity for a nationwide endorsement run easily cost ten million upfront. Then, paying for prime-time TV spots, digital ad campaigns, and billboard space swallowed another tens of millions as a baseline, with a completely open-ended ceiling.
By contrast, how much did it cost for Nick to host a standalone product keynote? The venue, stage design, and livestream logistics combined ran maybe a few million—ten at the absolute maximum for a massive rollout.
Even factoring in secondary PR costs, they were looking at a fraction of a traditional budget. The impact was twice as powerful, and the treasury stayed full. As for the host spending hours talking on stage? The only real expenses were bottled water and catering boxes for the crew. It was basically voluntary labor for the boss.
Of course, the downside was the total sacrifice of a normal life. The moment you became the face of a brand, every single misstep was scrutinized, clipped, and thrown online for the court of public opinion to tear apart. You could be entirely in the right, but nuance didn't survive a social media storm, and the internet rarely cared about the facts.
Still, the visibility brought a massive upside: influence. A high public profile acted as a shield for a startup founder. If a massive conglomerate tried to crush a beloved, highly visible tech creator in the dark, the public backlash would be catastrophic. This was exactly why the tech industry's biggest players were suddenly making regular media appearances.
After returning to his hotel room to decompress, Nick checked his watch. He was just about to head down to the lobby for lunch with Ryan and Calloway when Alex sent a text letting him know that an executive delegation from Amazon was already downstairs waiting to see him.
A slight smirk touched Nick's lips. He'd known Amazon would try to get him in a room while he was in Miami, but he hadn't expected them to move this fast.
Nick met the delegation in a private conference room on the fifth floor. To his disappointment, Jeff hadn't shown up. Instead, sitting across the table was a very familiar face—Senior Vice President William Gerstenmaier, the aggressive corporate negotiator Nick had clashed with during their initial contract talks.
Noticing the distinct lack of enthusiasm on Nick's face, William offered a sharp smile. "What's the matter, Nick? Disappointed to see me again?"
Nick pulled out a chair and sat down without ceremony. "A little. I was under the impression Jeff was making the trip."
"The CEO fully intended to be here," William explained smoothly, leaning forward. "But an urgent board meeting popped up at the last second, so he had to delegate."
Nick rolled his eyes, a dry, self-deprecating laugh escaping him. "Right. Let's be real—I'm just a startup founder. I don't move the needle enough to warrant a personal visit from the second richest man in the world. I have enough self-awareness to know my place in the food chain."
William maintained his polished demeanor. "Don't sell yourself short. Jeff genuinely wanted to sit down with you; his schedule was locked in. It was an unavoidable conflict. He personally entrusted me to carry out these discussions on his behalf."
Nick cut him off with a dismissive wave, completely tuning out the corporate spin. "Look, William, let's skip the pleasantries. What's the real reason you're here? What terms are you trying to push today?"
"Come on, Nick, we're old acquaintances at this point, aren't we?" William raised an eyebrow, feigning offense. "As the host city representative, I just wanted to welcome you to Miami and catch up. Is a friendly visit that unwelcome?"
"Frankly? Yeah," Nick said bluntly.
The sheer directness of the response caught the room off guard. The two junior analysts sitting behind William and even the Militech staffer assisting Calloway had to cover their mouths to stifle their laughter.
William's eyes narrowed for a brief second before his expression softened back into a calculating smile. "I came here today to discuss an expansion of our current partnership. Are you telling me you aren't even curious?"
"Not really, no."
"Nick... you aren't even going to listen to the scope of the proposal?" William's polished veneer was finally starting to crack, a hint of genuine irritation bleeding through.
Nick dropped the casual attitude, his gaze locking onto the executive. "I know exactly what you want, William. But I've already told your acquisition team multiple times: when it comes to the H1's core software architecture, Militech is not open to joint ventures."
"Don't draw a line in the sand just yet. Everything has a price, and we brought some incredibly aggressive numbers to the table this time," William pushed, his smile back in place.
Nick shook his head. "There's nothing to negotiate. This is the equivalent of me walking into your headquarters and demanding a cut of Amazon Web Services."
"If the strategic alignment was right, even AWS wouldn't be entirely off the table," William countered, his tone dead serious.
Nick stared at him for a beat, letting out a cold, sharp laugh. "Sorry, but I don't have your level of corporate hubris. The H1 ecosystem is the foundation of our entire future roadmap for the company. I am not letting an outside entity stick their hands in my engine room."
William's casual posture vanished entirely. He leaned across the glass table, his expression darkening into a hard, threatening mask. "This market is a monolith, Nick. You don't have the teeth or the stomach to swallow it alone. If you try to hog the entire ecosystem, you're going to choke. And in this game, if you can't digest what you take, it won't just ruin your company—it'll end your career."
Nick raised an eyebrow, a soft, amused chuckle escaping him. "Should I take that as an official threat from Amazon high command, or just standard corporate bullying?"
"Consider it a friendly piece of market advice," William replied, the cold smile returning.
Nick leaned back in his leather chair, crossing his legs and locking his eyes on the executive. "If that's the play, then we're definitely done here. Threats don't work on me, William. And you need to remember something: a twenty-three-year-old engineer who has successfully brought multiple disruptive, proprietary technologies to market in under a year doesn't just stop innovating. You have no idea what else I'm holding in my lab."
"Some technologies are built to streamline a supply chain. Others are built to completely dismantle a legacy industry."
"I prefer to keep things constructive. But if your leadership decides to push me into a corner..."
Nick leaned forward, his voice dropping to a calm, icy whisper. "Take the automated warehousing project we just launched. Once that rolls out nationwide, it's going to permanently eliminate millions of manual fulfillment jobs. Now ask yourself—what happens if I apply that exact same disruptive logic to another sector?"
William's breath hitched slightly, his mind racing. "Are you talking about targeting the core e-commerce infrastructure...?"
Nick smiled, a slow, enigmatic expression that didn't reach his eyes. He shook his head. "I'm not naming any specific targets. Theoretically, every legacy industry is vulnerable to automation. History is a graveyard of multi-billion-dollar sectors that vanished because they thought they were too big to be replaced by a superior algorithm."
"Bluffing," William snapped, though his voice lacked its previous absolute certainty. He took a slow breath, forcing his composure back into place, and adjusted his collar. "Let's get back to reality. You owe it to your shareholders to at least look at our integration proposal before you walk away from the table."