The Boston Train & The Ghost Room

The South Station platform in Boston was biting and indifferent in June 2005. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the wooden bench, their breath fogging against the damp morning air, waiting for the southward train back to Virginia. They were twenty-two years old, exhausted, and carrying the stinging residue of rejection.

Just twenty-four hours earlier, they had pitched Paul Graham—the pioneering programmer who had just co-founded Y Combinator—on an idea they called 'MyMobileMenu.' The premise was simple: order takeout sandwiches and food from your flip phone over clunky WAP data connections. Graham had listened, chewed quietly, and delivered an unvarnished verdict: mobile carriers held all the keys, the networks were sluggish, and the timing was entirely wrong. They had been turned down flat.