My job now was to wait around and get myself ready. Sort of find a comfortable kneeling position and get the basket adjusted just right under my head and wait. This way I wouldn’t have to even get up and listen while Joe mumbled some insincere platitude about how sorry he was to have to be the executioner. He could just pull the lever, let the guillotine go, and fate would be satisfied without any more lies.

But an unbelievable thing happened while I was kneeling there playing with the basket. (Okay, okay, so I was on my cellular phone with First Albany. But why ruin the whole scenario?) Joe didn’t pull the lever. He didn’t give me a lot of B.S. platitudes. He just called and said we’d made a good effort. He was sorry for all our sakes it didn’t work out, but he had a lot of faith in me, he had a lot of faith in the firm, and his word was his word. He was directing Cowen to print the books on their own with just First Albany. Now we’d better start preparing for the Road Show (a three-week traveling marathon during which you are taken to meet all the world’s principal money managers in order to sell the offering). And that was it.

THAT WAS IT! I couldn’t believe it. The mounties had arrived at the last minute. Superman had swooped down and saved the heroine, just in the nick of time! The Allies had landed!

Joe had kept his word at a crucial moment when I had nowhere else to turn. Now you can understand my personal attachment to Joe, Maria, and Cowen. This was something deep and personal to me.

Yeah, I was going to do the Road Show. I was going to raise the money. We’d all get rich. But first there was something I had to do, a conversation I had to have with myself. Why was I so paranoid that this offering wouldn’t come off? Why was I so certain the big investment banker would abandon me? That is a very good question and deserves very careful answers.

Despite everything you may read, society is basically divided into classes. You’re either from the right side of the tracks or the wrong side of the tracks.

People are very careful to associate only with people on their own level or higher. These levels are determined by different things: education, family, breeding, ability, and, most importantly, money.

In order to maintain this hierarchical structure that keeps people from lower levels out, society employs gatekeepers.

You’ve all seen these gatekeepers. Often they are just that, gatekeepers. They stand at the gates of exclusive private country clubs in their ornate uniforms and only let dues-paying members in. They can also be found at the front doors of fancy mansions or apartment buildings. But this is only the most obvious form of gatekeeper. There are many other gatekeepers in society besides the maître d’s at fancy restaurants or the doormen. They just lack a uniform. They are on college admissions committees, they are executive directors of museums and charities, they run industry trade groups and standards committees of government regulators. All of them work to perpetuate the established order and prevent newcomers from joining the club and annoying or perhaps displacing established members.