He rang the bell at 9:30 with both hands, thirty-one years old in the hoodie the comms team had approved, and by 11:40 the arithmetic on his phone read forty-one million. The lock-up ran 180 days; not one share could be sold until March. He gave his mother the number in the car on the way to the lunch and watched her try to arrange her face.

In March it was eleven. He had spent the winter running the figure nightly, adjusting for tax, deciding which house, and telling the four engineers who had taken equity instead of salary to hold. Two of them asked him directly whether they should be worried. He told them what he believed, which was the same thing he had said at the bell, and they believed him.