Dot.Bomb

By: J. David Kuo

Narrated by: J. David Kuo

J. David Kuo had a ringside seat at one of the biggest busts of the Internet age. Value America (NASDAQ: VUSA) was supposed to revolutionize retailing by using the Internet -- no more retailers or distributors needed. Fred Smith, legendary founder of Federal Express, called it the best business model he'd ever seen and invested millions of dollars. In a few short years, the company raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars before a spectacular crash.

As Senior Vice President of Communications, Kuo saw the stupefying insanity of it all: the machinations, delusions, good efforts, and wild miscalculations that led to the company's demise. Writing with a liveliness and flair seldom seen in business narratives, Kuo brings us tales of wretched excess, inspired salesmanship, online dreams, and unmitigated moneygrabbing. This is an unforgettable story of Internet mania that everyone who ever invested in a tech stock will be dying to read.©2001 by David Kuo (P)2001 by Time Warner AudioBooks.

A look at Net Mania at its worst

As a former long-time resident of Charlottesville, I'm all too familiar with the rise & fall of the area's only billion+ $ net venture. So it was very interesting to get an insider's look at Value America through David Kuo's eyes.

First and foremost, this is a case study of a fast-moving dot.com with a "flexible" business plan. Value America was heralded for its inventory-less business plan, but eventually the major flaws in the model were revealed, especially on the B2C side. This book provides mostly cautionary tales. It describes the infighting and power struggles among the executives. It details the inability of the CEO to rein in the founder Craig Winn, the "visionary" promise-now/deliver-later salesman. And it touches on the operational failures that led to thousands of delayed orders and a general technology break down. Because Kuo was in PR and bus dev, we don't get an in-depth look at the information technology infrastructure, supposedly the crown-jewel of this company's assets. Instead we see the excessive and sometimes irresponsible deal-making that occured with little executive knowledge of the technological requirements.

It is an entertaining book that depicts how a company can blow through hundreds of millions of dollars that result in little salvageable value. Like the "startup.com" movie, dot.bomb also shows the emotional fallout at the executive level.

Abridged

I read this book years ago and loved it as a time capsule of the dot.com era - but unfortunately this isn't the full story, it's an abridged version of the book that leaves out countless details that made the story so absurd. Hopefully this will get a full and proper unabridged version one day.

With that said this abridged version is still pretty good and gives you a general overview and some detail here and there. It does seem to skip around a lot but you get all the basics. As a fairly quick read this is enjoyable.

The reader is the author and he does a professional job.