dot.bomb

This was 1999, the pinnacle of dot-com fever, and David Kuo had just been invited to walk through the magic portal. It was a huge Internet start-up called Value America, and in his new job as communications SVP, Kuo would spread their gospel: a new kind of retailing, linking customers directly to distributors or other middlemen. Ahead for Kuo lay the chance to be part of a new business paradigm. Not to mention the riches when his stock options bore fruit.

Except the founder and chairman wasn't a twentysomething internet crusader. He was over forty and a successful old-economy CEO. And he kept talking about his new private plane and his plans to run for governor — even President! New investors came on board almost weekly, but whenever Kuo tried out the company's Web site, the items he ordered never seemed to arrive….

Dot.Bomb is the amazing story of the Internet gold rush as it could only be told by an insider. David Kuo saw it all: the sky's-the-limit optimism, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in a giddy grab for eyeballs and market share, the investors slavering to be on the inside, the belief that there really were new rules. He also saw what happened when gravity reasserted itself, Wall Street demanded results, and flaws and failures that had been glossed over suddenly loomed huge. In the blink of an eye, Value America crashed back to earth, filed for bankruptcy, and was gone.

David Kuo's account of his days and nights at Value America captures with the intensity of a great novel the people who made this such a powerful experience; their incredibly hard work, their genuine belief, and their humor. Just as vividly it portrays their unbridled greed, wretched excesses, ego-driven blunders, and unmitigated power grabbing. This is a tale of naked capitalism and the most remarkable varieties of human nature, a story that anyone who has ever invested in tech stock — or anyone who relished a perfect morality tale — will savor and long remember.

• Prologue
• Part One: You Say You Want A Revolution
1. Dream Weaving
2. Bowling for Dollars
3. Peddling Sand
4. Phoenix
• Part Two: Money For Nothing
5. IPO: Instant Payoff Occasion
6. Ground Zero
7. Evangelizing
8. Wrenching
9. Hear Me Roar
10. Purloined Sirloins
11. Hog-Tied
12. Counting Sheep
• Part Three: Helter Skelter
13. "To the moon, Alice, to the moon!"
14. Snake Handlers
15. Here Comes the Bride
16. DefCon3
17. Controlling Legal Authority
18. "Houston, We've Got a Problem"
19. Coup du Jour
• Epilogue

A frightening story about human stupidity. I include the author of the book in that statement!