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The Venture Cafe
Oh, no, I thought. Not another one of these rags-to-riches, I've-got-mine and-so-now-I'm-going-to-rub-your-face-in-it type books.
Thanks, but I've had enough. And then I took a moment to actually read this thing.
Turns out that this Teresa Esser isn't even an entrepreneur -- she's the wife of an entrepreneur. So what business does she have trying to tell me how to start a company?
Esser watched her husband start an Ethernet telephone firm that was eventually sold to 3Com for $90 million. After the company was sold, she spent three years interviewing 150 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate lawyers and high-tech headhunters about how a person can start their own high-tech company.
She interviewed members of the MIT blackjack team, asking them what it was like to gamble with other people's money. That's what the high-tech entrepreneurs were doing, you know, when they were financing their businesses with venture capital.
A lot of these new companies wound up going out of business. But some of them did not. Some of the new companies ACTUALLY SUCCEEDED at creating wealth for their investors -- including their venture capitalists, which more often than not happen to be pension funds.
So, when these high-tech entrepreneurs succeed at solving a problem and creating a solution and getting the product to market, and achieving a liquidity event, they make money for their investors.
There are a lot of business authors who spend half of the book thanking their wives for putting up with their obnoxious behavior and the other half bragging about how great they are.
Teresa Esser doesn't brag, really. I have to say, I admired how candid Esser was when she was talking about serious problems, like the time her husband got burned out and had to leave his company.
This was obviously a very painful experience, but she lays it all on the line. Esser didn't have to go back and dredge up those repressed memories about what it was like when her husband was on the verge of losing control of the technical direction his company was taking, and freaked out and asked Esser to turn off the electricity so that they would have to prematurely end an annoying board meeting.
She didn't have to fly to White Plains, New York and convince the God of high-tech headhunting, Chuck Ramsey, to spill the beans on how exactly you convince an top-ranked executive to leave his job and join a high-tech startup.
But she did.She could have spent the past three years lying on the beach in the Bahamas, drinking pina coladas and putting on sunscreen. Instead, she schlepped around Boston's financial district, asking jaded venture capitalists how an unknown entrepreneur could increase her chances of obtaining venture capital financing.
You know, most of these dot-com brag books make me sick. But I have to say, this one made me laugh.
I liked the story about the rat. These two kids started a company out of a disgusting apartment in Philadelphia and they tried to have a formal business meeting with a director of new business development from a Wall Street financial firm, but it was hard because they had these twelve-inch rats.
When the director of new business development came to visit, they didn't even have any clean cups to serve him tap water in. That story was funny. They gave the director of new business development a dirty dinosaur cup that they had gotten free from Burger King. And then he left. And the guys tried to figure out what had gone wrong with the meeting.
I mean, okay, okay. It's hard to start a new company. But with a book like this, at least you know that you're not the only one going through hard times.
To go through your own hard times, you can from The Venture Cafe from bn.com Also, check out The Venture Cafe web site. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then hit the submission page.
The VC firms usually made out pretty well on the dot-com's. When the dot-com went public at $410 per share, the VC cashed out. VC's, broker's, and investment banks made tons of money while the personal investor totally fleeced.
Of course, one might have suspected that something untoward was happening. If a company goes public at $14 a share and closes at $400, the company has been done a tremendous disservice by the VC and investment bank. The money is supposed to be going to capital for the company. The company shares should have been priced at $400. The company looses, and the investor looses. The VC, broker, and investment banker win! The VC wins by offloading a loser company at tremendous gains, the broker wins with commisions on a grossly overvalued stock, and the investment bank wins by taking a stock public and retaining lots of options at $14.
I had a difficult time understanding what this book "does" for the reader from this review. Is it simply a collection of stories of people who succeeded and those who didn't. Or does she provide some kind of analysis and state what she thinks were the important reasons for success?
I would be very interested if this book postulates some reasons (even though it must always be remembered that they are her opinions and not facts) but if it's just a collection of stories, then why should I buy this book? I can read all about the rediculous wastes that went on during the dot-com years in the newspaper. Or see that one documentary movie whose name I forget now (you know, it was that one where the filmakers planned on following the success story of a startup only to end up capturing the true story of a dream gone bad).
Hey, if anyone has some theories about what seperated the winners from the losers, please post a reply to this message. I'd be interested in hearing them. I was never involved in the dot-com bust (except via the stock market) so I really "missed out" on an important lesson here. And I'm not convienced that this book would help me out.
GMD
watch this
Is it simply a collection of stories of people who succeeded and those who didn't. Or does she provide some kind of analysis and state what she thinks were the important reasons for success?
... if it's just a collection of stories, then why should I buy this book?
So you can get a few raw facts and draw your OWN conclusions about what works and what doesn't?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"It's not a difficult thing to make a lot of money if all one wants out of life is to make a lot of money." -Citizen Kane
Happy people make bad consumers.
Timing is a big factor too.
.com back in '97 with the hopes of making mega bucks. The companies stock had just split and I had a TON of options as a signing bonus. The stock went up another 25% in the months just after I started. Now it's a tenth of its value.
.com experience. Those still left are working longer hours with a higher stress levels and watching their precious options continuing to wither. Sucks to be them. hehheh
I went to a
It was frustrating working with all of the 25 year old tecchie millionaires and the "new-rich" asshole managers. It is almost a caste system now. The "old-timers" who have been there for 5 or more years, and the feeble-minded newcomers who are sweating their lives away chasing the dream they can never have.
I've since left the company. While I was there, I learned a great deal about the realities of the
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Where the janitors earned $15.00 an hour to push a broom. I know intelligent people with college degrees who work longer hours at tough jobs for less money. Nurses, teachers, human resources, data entry... a big chunk of people employed in those sectors don't make that much money.
I worked for a union in rural Pennsylvania, and the low seniority guys were earning $9.50 an hour to not push a broom. The high seniority fellows that earned $13+/hour drove the equipment, while six or seven of the newer guys took turns using two shovels.
I'm not saying unions are all bad, and I'm definitely not saying this country would be better off without them. But believe it or not, some unions abuse employers just as badly as some employers used to abuse their workers.
If it wasn't for unions, we wouldn't have the 40-hour work week, paid sick time, or probably any other benifits.
/. comments in the past, I'd guess most slashdotters want unions.
Possibly. Workers sticking together for their own rights is a good thing. Being forced too, as in a union, is not. But to each their own.
Oh wait...I'm on Slashdot, talking to a bunch of young single males with no familes or social lives who are either independant contractors or H1B workers....
I agree with you on the young single male part. I believe most slashdotters are of that class, and thus support free software as they support Socialism. A few more years, and they'll make a real choice. Whether they change or not is irrelevant, but at least they'll understand more about their decisions.
Your comment itself, however, I believe is contradictory. The young crowd *wants* unions. How else are they to get high paying jobs without working for a few years? From reading
Have you read my journal today?
Let's get some facts straight.
1. Janitors do not just push brooms.
2. 15.00 an hour is not enough for me to have to unclogged a public toilet.
3. Having to empty the garbage cans that end up getting filled with needles and other dangerous crap. Just to get it to the dumpster 15.00 isn't even close.
4. Having to paint the outside wall in the sun all day because you kid decided to show his spelling skills with a spray can. $15.00 doesn't begin to start to cover.
I have never been a janitor but I certainly appreciate what they have to put up with. And listening to people berate them and what they do shows how clueless people are.
Let me give you a clue here is a plunger. And if you think it is just like home unclogging a public toilet, why don't you volunteer.
Nurses and teachers may be the only ones on your list that deserve the high pay.