Part 2 : v I was Dana Carlton before Slack channels, rooftop kombucha taps, agile pods, and glass walls you could write on with markers nobody capped. I was Dana when Northstar was four desks in a strip mall next to a laser tag arena outside Fremont, back when the office smelled like carpet glue, old pizza, and ambition that had not yet learned to wear brand colors. We had no receptionist. No HR. No proper payroll software. No facilities team. We had a folding table, a beige printer that jammed every Wednesday, a mini fridge stocked with Diet Coke, and a founder named Martin Quinn who believed, passionately and incorrectly, that optimism could substitute for process.
After twenty years of quietly keeping the company alive, I was fired by a CEO who could not even remember my name. Gavin slid a severance folder across the conference table and said, “Clean exits make for clean transitions,” while HR smiled beside him. Buried between the NDA and COBRA paperwork was one strange clause: I had to surrender every remaining shareholder right before Monday’s $150 million merger. He laughed when I questioned it. “Dana, those old shares won’t even buy lunch.” I did not argue. I took the folder home, opened the fireproof box I had not touched in years, and found one dusty 2006 amendment. By sunrise, I understood exactly why they needed my signature so badly
