So they’d recorded a result from one of the times it worked. It was that recorded result that was displayed at the end of each demo. ... What Shaunak had just described sounded like a sham.

Chris Holmes made sure to school his daughter not just in the outsized success of its older generations but also in the failings of its younger ones. Both his father and grandfather had lived large but flawed lives, cycling through marriages and struggling with alcoholism. Chris blamed them for squandering the family fortune. “I grew up with those stories about greatness,” Elizabeth would tell The New Yorker in an interview years later, “and about people deciding not to spend their lives on something purposeful, and what happens to them when they make that choice—the impact on character and quality of life.”