DreamWave — Chapter One
Hardy Rapino. What a name, he’d always thought.
Hardy opened his laptop. The long, elegant balcony offered its usual inspiring view over Dubai, the tall glass buildings reflecting the sunrise perfectly, the early heat shimmering above the waking traffic. The horns had started early today and so had he – the first to arrive at his favourite co-working space.
He stared at the endless rows of numbers in the spreadsheet, looking for patterns, not really knowing what they would mean for his future. A tingling sensation grew, starting in his fingertips and spreading throughout his body. Something was off. He knew it.
He pushed the laptop away. Time for Matcha, he thought, already calculating in his head how much he was burning just to function. Another $8 to get his day going – the irony wasn’t lost on him.
This place was magic; there had been movies made about it. Huge digital transformations took place here, but the reality was the MBA had stopped opening doors. His Matcha arrived and he took a grateful sip. By the third coffee, Hardy would be able to call it a productive morning, mistaking motion for action with another quiet entry into the profit and loss columns.
No one had visited him in Dubai. Not once. This didn’t bother Hardy. He’d given up a lot to build his business. He’d missed weddings, funerals, and christenings to progress ideas. Lately though, the silence felt louder. He was no longer motivated to pitch, network, or hustle in bars. Every email, mention, or business meeting felt flat, like an applause in an empty room. This is the price of success, he told himself. When the screen went dark, so did the certainty.
There were now just 48 hours left before he couldn’t make payroll. His team of 20 were scattered across different time zones, working odd hours from cafes, spare bedrooms, and coworking hubs. An automation he’d set up allowed him to know when every $100 was spent. What he didn't realise was that multiple $99 transactions would be the most common spend among his team. There was a Google Doc somewhere that forbade this, but he’d been unable to locate it. Trouble was brewing.
Hardy braved a glance at Slack. He was tagged in messages all over the place, but didn't really read them. He particularly hated messages that called him “boss” – it just didn’t feel true anymore. In that day’s most popular thread, one of his designers suggested they could sell merchandise if they went under. It made Hardy want to vomit. Have I been too soft on them, he wondered, or was the total addressable market just not viable?
Hardy used to love this world. The hustle and bustle was what made him. No wife, no kids. Hardy was building an empire. These days, when he stared out at the tall buildings with their mirrored glass walls, all he saw was a lifeless, soulless man looking back – tired, breaking, broken.
The Slack notifications pinged relentlessly as he sat in the morning heat, scrolling aimlessly, hoping for some magical wire transfer that would make the panic stop.
The monthly all-company meeting looming now, less than a day away. He had no real updates, no Hail Mary. Only a truth he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud: they were failing. Not because people hadn’t worked hard or enjoyed the ride, but because somewhere along the way, he’d become just another ghost drifting through co-working spaces, hoping the free WIFI and stale coffee might keep the dream alive a little longer.
He tried to focus on Slack again. The rows of green dots next to each name used to fill him with pride. He knew each person’s story: the designer who’d just moved to Dubai to chase the startup dream; the engineer in Lisbon juggling two kids and this chaotic paycheque; Clara, his Chief Operating Officer; the junior operations lead who believed Hardy was unstoppable. Now, every dot felt like another ounce of weight pressing on his shoulders. He dreaded the eager messages from those wanting to contribute slides or updates for tomorrow’s All-Hands – desperate to help shape a future that no longer existed.
The designer pinged him again: Quick update on the funding call?”
He didn’t reply. What was there to say? He switched back to the spreadsheet: unpaid invoices, expenses, runway calculations in red. It all blurred into a swamp of negative numbers. The only asset he had left was the piece of his mind that still insisted on dreaming. That tiny corner that still whispered: You’re a visionary, Hardy. You’ll come back from this. But the joke was, these days, he couldn’t even sleep long enough to let the dreams rest, four hours a night if he was lucky. No way to monetise that, he chuckled in spite of himself, shaking his head as he took another sip of his now-rancid coffee. Monetise was the key word he’d picked up from his MBA – he knew all about it, except how to actually do it.
Through the glass doors, he could see the co-working space starting to fill with fresh faces, new projects, and loud optimism drifting in from Dubai Marina. Hardy leaned back in his chair, his hands now sweating ever so slightly. He let the noise wash over him – a reminder that while his version of the dream was dying, the city never stopped selling new ones. The streets are always watching.
Between exhaustion and denial, he almost convinced himself he was winning. Hardy shut the laptop. The hum of the city against the glass, a low endless vibration, matched the one inside his chest. It was not muscle pumps from Barry's Bootcamp – a membership he couldn’t bring himself to give up, no matter what it meant for his bank account. Dubai never really slept, the skyline just grew into a blur. The needles would move, graphs would grow to the right, and the dream would realign. But beneath that thin layer of hope, something else had begun to stir – he just couldn’t name it yet.