It is 1999, at the pinnacle of dot-com fever. David Kuo has just been invited to walk through the magic portal. This is the huge Internet startup, Value America. In his new job as communications SVP, David is expected to spread the gospel: here's a new kind of retailing, linking consumers directly to manufacturers over the Internet -- no more stores or distributors or other middlemen. Ahead for David lies the chance to be part of the new business paradigm. Not to mention the riches when his stock options bear fruit.
Except the founder and chairman isn't a twenty-something Internet crusader -- he's over forty and a successful old-economy CEO. And he keeps talking about his new private plane and his plans to run for governor -- even president! New investors come on board almost weekly, but whenever David tries out the company's website, the things he orders seem never 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 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 loomed huge. The money was gone, new money was scarce, the CEO was pushed out. In what seemed like 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 the incredibly hard work, the genuine belief, and their humor of the people who made this so powerful an experience. Just as powerfully, it portrays unbridled greed, wretched excess, ego-driven blunders, and unmitigated power-grabbing.
Here is a tale of naked capitalism and the most remarkable varieties of human nature, a story
