A magazine writer who visited Shaw’s outfit in 1994 was struck by what he saw: By now the firm employed 135 people and accounted for as much as 5 percent of the daily turnover on the New York Stock Exchange. The dress code was casual and the firm had a faintly Bohemian feel. Staffers rolled out sleeping bags to stay over at night. “It is easier to focus if you don’t go home,” explained a young employee named Jeffrey Bezos, who went on to found the Internet retailing giant Amazon.11
