dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath
by J. David Kuo

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Book Reviews of dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath

Book Review: The Creator Syndrome
Summary: 4 Stars

Summary of dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath

J. David Kuo saw it all: the sky's-the-limit optimism, the hundreds of millions spent in a giddy grab for market share, the investors slavering to be inside, the belief that there really were new rules. He also saw what happened when wretched excess and ego-driven blunders forced gravity to reassert itself and when, ultimately, Wall Street demanded results. His book, alive with hilarious incidents and colorful characters, is destined to become a touchstone of the dot-com era.

"The single goal was to build scale, build the brand, and become the Internet behemoth... overnight," he writes in describing how Winn, a traditional businessman with traditional ideas about building a traditional company, was sucked into the day's unbridled cyber-fervor as he tried to assemble his vision of a one-stop electronic shop that took advantage of all the Net's imagined bells and whistles. "[But] Winn had more competitors than he imagined," Kuo continues. "In Silicon Valleys, alleys, and corridors, retailers, technologists, and bankers were creating dot.com companies that would sell pet food, lingerie, books, electronics, discount items, luxury items, home-improvement items, furniture, and everything else imaginable. All those companies were already operating on new Internet math. Winn had to catch up."

In the pages that follow, Kuo vividly chronicles the heady years that came just after Michael Wolff's pioneering Burn Rate era, and he does so with just as juicy an insider's perspective (although without the rancor and animosity that such an experience often engenders). There also are plenty of practical lessons here. One strongly suspects, however, that much like those brought back from gold rushes to Sutter's Mill, these also will go largely unheeded when the fever spreads again. --Howard Rothman

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