- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Orion; New edition edition (3 Jun 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0752826069
- ISBN-13: 978-0752826066
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
467,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98 in Books > Biography > Science, Mathematics & Technology > Computers
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Journalist Michael Wolff is a recognised pioneer in the business of cyberspace who has been developing products and services for the online world since the dark ages of 1994. During the following years however, not all the activities he engaged in nor all the people he dealt with left a pleasant taste in his mouth--although 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 highly successful he attempted to transfer the concept to a variety of online offshoots and in the process collaborating 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 characterised by the old adage that warns us to "be careful what we wish for, for we just might get it". --Howard Rothman
Product Description
Michael Wolff was a journalist and writer; in 1998 he is a journalist and writer again. But in the first half of the '90s he was an Internet entrepreneur, Chairman and CEO of Wolff New Media. This is Wolff's story. BURN RATE is hugely informative about the world of the net and the web, search engines, closed systems, online pornography; it is also incredibly funny. As readable as a novel, BURN RATE is an all too human story of one man, at first idealistic and naive, then corrupted and increasingly cynical, and eventually burned out and tired, and of a world that bears as much resemblance to the school playground (not least in the age of it's major players) as it does to the world of conventional businesses. If there is one book which tells us about what is going on in the complex and confusing struggle for the future of the Internet it is this one.
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First Sentence
I am 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 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
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must-read for all would-be startups,
By A Customer
This review is from: Burn Rate: How I Survived The Gold Rush Years On The Internet (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:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly readable for a 'business book',
By A Customer
This review is from: Burn Rate: How I Survived The Gold Rush Years On The Internet (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!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating historical account,
By
This review is from: Burn Rate: How I Survived The Gold Rush Years On The Internet (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.
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