| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Journalist Michael Wolff is a recognized pioneer in the business of cyberspace, meaning he has been developing products and services for the online world since the dark ages of 1994. During the intervening years, however, not all the activities he engaged in, nor all the people he dealt with, left a pleasant taste in his mouth-- although, to be sure, his cumulative adventures certainly have been very lucrative. In Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, Wolff pulls few punches as he candidly and methodically recounts the single steps forward and multiple steps back that marked his experiences while trying to transform a fledgling print media enterprise into a towering New Media colossus. After developing a series of "NetGuide" books that proved hugely successful, he attempted to transfer the concept to a variety of online offshoots and in so doing connected with Wired magazine, Time-Warner's Pathfinder, the late Robert Maxwell's media empire, AOL, assorted venture capitalists, sundry competitors and numerous would-be partners. Burn Rate is a fascinating tale that might best be characterized by the old adage that warns us to "be careful what we wish for, for we just might get it." --Howard Rothman
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Michael Wolff's wickedly funny chronicle of his rags-to-riches-to-rags adventure as a fledgling Internet entrepreneur exposes an industry powered by hype, celebrity, and billions of investment dollars -- and notably devoid of profit-making enterprises. As he describes his efforts to control his company's burn rate -- the amount of money the company consumes in excess of its income -- Wolff offers a no-holds-barred portrait of unaccountable successes and major disasters, including the story behind Wired magazine and its fanatical founder, Louis Rossetto; the rise of America Online, perhaps the most dysfunctional successful company in history, and the humiliating inability of people such as Bill Gates to untangle the intricacies of the Web.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
I am a reluctant participant in a conference of CEOs of information and technology companies being held at the Ritz in Laguna Beach, one of the poshest in the Ritz chain. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I am a reluctant participant in a conference of CEOs of information and technology companies being held at the Ritz in Laguna Beach, one of the poshest in the Ritz chain. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A superbly written work which anyone who is either doing, thinking of doing, or merely interested in the kinds of things that happen when you do a start-up should read.
Not at all dry in the usual manner of "business" books, Burn rate is by turns gripping and genuinely funny.
Read it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a first hand account of one man's 'Gold Rush' years running an Internet related business from about 1992 to 1998 - ancient history in Internet time, as 1992 was pre-browser!
It's as gripping as a novel at times and certainly doesn't read like a dry business book or a How To manual (How Not To.. maybe!).
The story follows the author from start up through to raising venture capital and trying to sell out for megabucks. If you didn't know it had happened, you really wouldn't believe it.
Michael Wolff is not another business person turned author, but visa versa and it shows. It's written with real flair and at times is very funny indeed. The characterisation is particularly vivid.
However, it's also thought provoking and meditative where it comes to what the net actually is and where it's going. It despairs at times that it will end up as a medium consisting only of sites about sex chat and selling ginsu knives but it's also upbeat and positive when it comes to the future. Michael is obviously addicted to the business and the book is a 'time out' to recharge before the next venture.
Ironically, the really disappointing element is the website. It's only there to promote the book (not really a big surprise) but it could have been so much more eg discussions, VC raising tips, even a VC company presence to review net related business concepts. I'm sure Michael could have come up with much more compelling content with a bit of thought.
But this is the only minor quibble I had. A really good read deserving of a wider audience than it will probably get. Go on buy it!
Format:Paperback
I picked this up second-hand a month or so ago, intrigued by its promise of a first-person account of the machinations of the early years of the commercialization of the internet. I wasn't disappointed. Wolff documents a period that seems like a very long time ago (the book was published in 1998, which makes it ancient history in internet time), but the lessons learnt and the choices made then have shaped the electronic world we inhabit today. The fact that some of these (e.g. the notion that users would make a careful selection of their browser's home page because it was a reflection of their personality - like the newspaper they took) appear bizarre today is only a reflection of how far we've come.
It was interesting to read about some of the efforts that I was familiar with (if only in a limited way) at the time - for example, Time Warner's Full Service Network, a digital video trial that ran in Orlando in 1994-5 that was eventually deemed an expensive failure owing to the cost of the set-top boxes. In addition, the rise of the internet was to supplant these so-called "wall gardens" (the original AOL was another example) with their closed set of information services.
Wolff is a good writer (he reminds us several times during the story that this was his original profession, lest he turn out to be not much of a businessman) and he weaves a fascinating mixture of accounts of tough negotiations and technical speculation here in this tale. Some of the latter is very interesting - at one point, someone speculates that Time Warner might end up buying AOL (in the event, it was to be the other way round), and towards the end, he quotes a skeptical colleague as saying, "A few years from now, if you say 'dotcom' to someone, they'll break up". Which is more or less what happened.
It was interesting to read about some of the efforts that I was familiar with (if only in a limited way) at the time - for example, Time Warner's Full Service Network, a digital video trial that ran in Orlando in 1994-5 that was eventually deemed an expensive failure owing to the cost of the set-top boxes. In addition, the rise of the internet was to supplant these so-called "wall gardens" (the original AOL was another example) with their closed set of information services.
Wolff is a good writer (he reminds us several times during the story that this was his original profession, lest he turn out to be not much of a businessman) and he weaves a fascinating mixture of accounts of tough negotiations and technical speculation here in this tale. Some of the latter is very interesting - at one point, someone speculates that Time Warner might end up buying AOL (in the event, it was to be the other way round), and towards the end, he quotes a skeptical colleague as saying, "A few years from now, if you say 'dotcom' to someone, they'll break up". Which is more or less what happened.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Too Long - Not to the point
I bought this book in 1999. I got bored with it. It is basically about the start up of an Internet Content provider. I found it kind of empty and boring. Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2000
A well written page turner...
Having been web-savvy for about a year I really wanted to get my teeth into this book. From the first page you get insights into this fast moving industry and a look at some of... Read more
Published on 12 Oct 1999
Who is Michael Wolff?
When I read the cover of this book I thought "Who is Michael Wolff?" Having read the book I'm still not too sure but it seem he was involved in some 2nd division... Read more
Published on 20 Sep 1999
one of the best non-fiction books i have ever read
MW is a great writer. And BR is a great book. Why ? Because he tells multiple stories. A. The greed and dishonesty of players in the venture capital markets. B. Read more
Published on 5 Dec 1998
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Business & Economic History
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Company Histories
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > E-business
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Economics
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Management
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Professional Finance
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Entrepreneurship
- Books > Computing & Internet
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
