We shipped the software on time, and to my relief, the initial reviews from press and analysts were very positive. But within a month, users were reporting serious reliability and integrity issues. One customer, with an enterprise portal intended to support thousands of concurrent users, reported that the system crashed if more than 100 users were on it at the same time. Two weeks later one of our biggest customers, a multi-billion dollar bank, demanded its money back.

Our competitors got wind of our problems, analysts refused to recommend us, and customers were furious. Worse yet, sales leads dried up and cash flow went negative. The company wound up taking in less than half the revenue it originally projected for the quarter and was forced to lay off 30 percent of the staff. Despite our desperate efforts to retrofit the code, sales and stock prices plunged, and Port was eventually sold for pennies per share.

The only good news was that Alan was fired in the first wave of layoffs. Apparently somebody had told upper management about the alpha-beta business. It might even have been me.