The evening Étienne asked to see the numbers Tuesday evening, end of the day, the open space had cleared except for Étienne. Étienne holds sixty percent of the house and spends his working week at a fund that acquires software publishers, and he looks at ERPs all year the way others read balance sheets. He sat on the edge of my desk, a metal water bottle in hand, and said what he always says when he senses someone is telling themselves a story. "What's that based on?" I was about to ans...