High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars [Paperback]

If you've ever gone out to lunch with a coworker and suddenly found yourself witness to a savage stream of unflattering assessments of bosses, wicked gossip, and the-emperor-has-no-clothes analysis of your industry, you'll know what it's like to read High Stakes, No Prisoners. Ferguson, an MIT PhD., started up a company called Vermeer Technologies in 1994, a rough time for start-ups in Silicon Valley. The country was coming out of a recession, the stock market was stagnant, and the Internet wasn't yet taken seriously by those with money to invest. Vermeer had a software program called FrontPage that only someone who understood the coming power of the Net could appreciate. Even in Silicon Valley, few were so prescient.

Most of High Stakes is the story of Vermeer, from its start-up to its sale to Microsoft. (Now bundled with Microsoft Office, FrontPage is used by more than 3 million people worldwide.) Along the way, Ferguson met the players in the Valley and formed strong opinions of them. He describes Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale as an egomaniac and technological dolt in way, way over his head. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is "severely warped." One of his best lines sums up Silicon Valley as a place where "one finds little evidence that the meek shall inherit the earth."

But this isn't just the technological equivalent of WWF trash-talking. Ferguson is very tough on himself, too, and details his own shortcomings as a person and a businessman. Mostly, it's a gloves-off account of how things really get done in high technology today, as refreshingly honest and acerbic an account as you'll ever read. --Lou Schuler

A very interesting read. Not often there is a book written by someone high up on the 'inside' about the life of an Internet start-up.

Charles Ferguson started Vermeer Technologies and turned his very big idea into FrontPage, the first software product for creating and managing a website. 12 months after starting the company he sold it to Microsoft for $133 million. This is his personal account of how Silicon Valley and technology start-ups really work - the sharks, networks, money, geniuses and what it takes to win in the Internet industry. where any speed below warp nine doesn't get you to takeoff.

Charles H. Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies in 1993. He consulted for the White House, agencies in the US government, and leading high-tech companies. He has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theoretical and Computational Physics from Boston University. He has written for the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. He is a member of the Council on Foreign relations. He lives in Cambridge, MA.