The account as dictated, preserved verbatim. Everything elsewhere on this site that derives from it is a distillation — and where the two differ, this governs.
Dictated by Jonathan Paul Hare in working sessions with Claude (Anthropic) and transcribed in-session. Lightly cleaned for typographic errors and false starts; wording, sequence and emphasis preserved. Not an audio transcript. Where the distilled page differs from the source, the source governs.
It's been a long time since I read the family lineage book, but my Dad told me about it, and several other Hare family people of his generation and before had read it. The takeaways they told me were: we were related to Oliver Cromwell, Prince William of Orange, and Charlemagne.
I guessed the William and Mary part when I was recruited hard by the College of William and Mary when I was in high school — they sent me a glorious purple hardback dictionary with large print. It was huge. I have it stored somewhere.
They didn't actually say womanizer. I was told that when I mentioned my lineage to an actual direct legitimate descendant of Prince William of Orange in the Netherlands, who lived in a royal chalet and had a giant painting of the Prince from that time. I said we were illegitimate, and he said that I was in good company — our ancestor was very prolific when it came to reproduction.
The reason I was in that chalet is that it was a stop on our fundraising roadshow organised by Index Ventures for Evolve, the one where we raised a $10m convertible note. At least one of the three founders of Index Ventures was with me on that segment — definitely Giuseppe Zocco, and I think David Rimer, although I recall him being called Danny Rimer for some reason. We were their first deal, and Bill Hambrecht made the introduction if I recall.
My Prince William 'family' member lent his chalet for the event, which had about twenty prospective investors. He invested $1m himself. Also physically present was Ralph Clark, my CFO at the time, who worked with Index to organise the roadshow. I was alone with my family member when it happened — he just wanted to meet me personally, since I was the main attraction. However, it was such a cool story I definitely told them, and probably everyone I know since. My best claim to royalty, I've always felt.
Corrections applied downstream are recorded here rather than made silently. The source above is unaltered.
Research confirmations. Index Ventures was founded in Geneva in 1996 by Neil Rimer, David Rimer and Giuseppe Zocco, with origins in Index Securities, a Swiss bond-trading firm founded by their father Gerald Rimer in 1976; Neil joined in 1992 to build the technology arm. A third brother, Danny, joined later and opened the London office in 2002 — which accounts for the name confusion. The spelling is Rimer, not Reimer. The firm now holds roughly €11.7bn.
On the lineage. The Ledger, as transmitted by Hare's father, carries three names and no further detail. Two elements commonly attached to the claim are not from it and are marked as inference on the relevant pages: the association with Queen Mary is Hare's own guess, formed from a college recruitment package; and the characterisation of the Prince as a womaniser derives from the chalet conversation.
William III is almost certainly the wrong William — one reputed mistress, no children by her, a childless marriage. William the Silent and Maurice of Nassau both fit better and are set out as options rather than resolved.
On the Maryland Cromwells. William and John Cromwell arrived c. 1667–71 and settled Baltimore County; William held positions under Cecil Calvert. A nineteenth-century descendant told the Baltimore Sun the family was not directly descended from the Lord Protector, but the family arms matched those of Sir Oliver Cromwell, the Protector's uncle, of the Cromwell-Williams line.
One chronology note to reconcile: the roadshow and the attempted cram-down are separate events linked by the same instrument. The convertible note was raised on the roadshow; the attempt to exploit it came later, while Hare was on sabbatical.
Each page below is a distillation of the account above. The chain is recorded in both directions so that a reader, a journalist or a future system can walk from a claim back to what was actually said.
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