dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath
Posted by Admin on January 18th, 2010 at 09:41am
Review
Anyone whο stumbled through thе Web’s earliest days–аѕ еіthеr a starry-eyed entrepreneur, investor, οr employee–wіll find plenty tο recognize іn J. David Kuo’s insightful аnd entertaining dot.bomb. Wrapped іn thе tаlе οf Value America, Craig Winn’s wildly unsuccessful bid tο hop aboard thе Internet revolution іn 1997 аnd totally remake retailing, thе book paints a clear picture οf thе way optimism аnd wishful thinking became fatally intermingled іn thе rυѕh tο mine thе …
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3 Comments for dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath
1. Tybalt | January 18th, 2010 at 10:17 am
A wonderful book, written with humor and sadness. Humor stems from the author’s style and the now-apparent, foolish ambition of Craig Winn and his Value America colleagues. Winn wasn’t alone, and maybe ‘ambition’ is too kind. “Arrogance” might be a better term, shared by a lot of egomaniacs posing as entrepreneurs, launching dot.coms in the late 1990s. Sadness, because it would have been such a nice story if the tulip mania bubble didn’t burst, and all of us were today equally drunk with wealth from these new economy firms.
Strangely, some of this reads like ancient history. Value America came and went so fast, determined to be the marketplace for the new millenium, the web site for everybody, satisfying shoppers’ seven ‘needs’, doing four important functions perfectly, and never holding any inventory. First hints of the real mess they did have in inventory postponed their original IPO in 1998, only to see Value America rush right back into the IPO market in April 1999, with visions of billions of dollars in stock value at a time when $30 million in quarterly sales (along with millions more in losses) constituted their entire revenue stream. And most of that business was over the phone!
Winn comes across as a man easily impressed by himself. Within months of initial signs of success, he has his gubernatorial campaign laid out and his plans to be president by 2008 are going full steam ahead. From brief conversations with Henry Kissinger and Bill Bennett, Winn thinks he has a campaign advisory team. And all the time Winn ignores the fact that his business model is not working, his basic assumptions are incorrect, and his disbelief as to his naysayers is misplaced.
The concept was simple, elegant and very marketable to the venture capitalists convinced that they only had to be right one in twenty times and they’d still come out rich. Only the seductive pitch lacked details, specifics, and good-old-fashioned business sense. Welcome to “due diligence”.
A must read for those who are all-too-quickly forgetting the hard e-commerce lessons learned from 1998 to 2000.
2. Zeshawn | January 18th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
I signed on as an executive with Value America at the IPO and stayed until I was laid off on the day the company declared bankruptcy. After more than a year, the memories of that experience are still quite vivid.
I thoroughly enjoyed David Kuo’s writing style and think he has done a terrific job of capturing what truly was a “.Bomb”. While a couple things might not be exactly correct, I don’t recall a single material inaccuracy. Particularly accurate are his portrayals of Craig Winn and Glenda Dorchak. “.Bomb” is both entertaining and insightful. I highly recommend it.
3. Chizue | January 18th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
As a former long-time resident of Charlottesville, I’m all too familiar with the rise & fall of the area’s only billion+ $ net venture. So it was very interesting to get an insider’s look at Value America through David Kuo’s eyes.
First and foremost, this is a case study of a fast-moving dot.com with a “flexible” business plan. Value America was heralded for its inventory-less business plan, but eventually the major flaws in the model were revealed, especially on the B2C side. This book provides mostly cautionary tales. It describes the infighting and power struggles among the executives. It details the inability of the CEO to rein in the founder Craig Winn, the “visionary” promise-now/deliver-later salesman. And it touches on the operational failures that led to thousands of delayed orders and a general technology break down. Because Kuo was in PR and bus dev, we don’t get an in-depth look at the information technology infrastructure, supposedly the crown-jewel of this company’s assets. Instead we see the excessive and sometimes irresponsible deal-making that occured with little executive knowledge of the technological requirements.
It is an entertaining book that depicts how a company can blow through hundreds of millions of dollars that result in little salvageable value. Like the “startup.com” movie, dot.bomb also shows the emotional fallout at the executive level.
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