I was extremely capable for eleven years, and my capability was the thing being extracted, and it took me nine years to notice.

I met Christopher Lawson in 2013.

I was twenty-nine and had been four years at a corporate finance boutique downtown, doing structuring work for mid-market companies.

He was thirty-two and had a company called Vextor Dynamics that had eight employees, an office on Kettner with a leak in the ceiling, and a product with genuine promise in industrial sensor calibration.

He was also nine weeks from insolvency and did not know it, because his books were a disaster.