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suggesting the way in which their duties are bound together regardless of the value they have to the project. There is no one else to do the jobs that need doing. Together, they physically set up the servers at Telecom, developed the software running on the servers, run the website — even doing the graphics for it.

The system worked and the result is a “dream team”, says Ortmann. “It is such an oiled machine and everyone has their own expertise where they are shining. It is beautiful. It is really exciting to be part of such a team.” It means, he says, companies with 50 staff to their four will struggle to compete.

As 20 January approached, the pair found their days stretching out. First they were working 16 hours, then 18 hours and sometimes longer. The approaching deadline “was a horror — so scary”, says van der Kolk. They would make the 30-minute journey to Dotcom’s mansion — by the year’s end Batato had moved into a house above the property — and attend legal or Mega meetings. At the end of the meeting, Ortmann recalled, Dotcom would play the host and insist they stayed. “No no no”, Ortmann recalls, again and again, “we have to leave.” Mega would not be kept waiting.

The launch day was a Sunday. In the week leading up to it, both Ortmann and van der Kolk were still working on the final code for Mega. The days stretched out even longer with work being done right through the weekend of the launch.

“We had planned a big beta test,” Ortmann recalled. “We wanted to do artificial simulated road testing of all the compenents. We had to scratch that. There was no time left so we just launched it, untested.”

With the new Mega finished — or as much as it could be, van der Kolk called Dotcom. At that stage, he hadn’t slept since waking on Saturday, having worked through the night. Having gone without sleep for 28 hours, he rang Dotcom to tell him he and Ortmann were thinking about skipping the launch. “I don’t want to come any more,” van der Kolk told Dotcom. The site was working — job done. “We’d been up 28 hours,” recalls Ortmann, “we were sleepy, we didn’t want to drive.”

“No,” said Dotcom. “You cannot stay away.”

DOTCOM KNEW THE launch had to be mega, like him and like the new cloud storage business was intended to be.

Conveniently, his personal standing amongst New Zealanders had grown during his time in the country. Although notoriously suspicious of charismatic individuals or anyone verging on larger than life, Kiwis

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