Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet
by
Michael Wolff
ISBN-10: 0684856212
Though I knew generally what burn rate meant, I wasn’t aware of its implications. So I accepted this Amazon recommendation when I was researching for startup books. The book talks of how the owner of a media company is struggling to sell or position it strategically in the race of the upcoming internet (whatever internet meant back then). What this book really is – a book manual on business moves. Deals flying, promises exchanges, and crazy meetings. But interesting to see what really happens and that a startup is not just coding. Highlights:
- Naturally, the brightest figure from Burn Rate is the business guy that is trying to tie up random investors with companies on a variety of strategies. By the way, he makes it seems like business in itself is nothing like buying selling, but rather and art. The creativity Machinist comes with in terms of forming alliances, luring people into believing that the deal is going through are unimaginable. Basically – its what you make out of all the players, not what they are. You can move them. Just like a pieces of chess.
- Author says it really nice, “It was true that when you reconstructed the specifics of conversations with Machinist, you often could not find the bridges by which we’d crossed these large chasms to great fortune”
- Here is another example,
“You know, your friend Machinist promised me, absolutely promised me, no doubt, no question, he’d have me out in a year, ” Rubin said, his pain apparent.. “You think I would ever have gone into this deal without that promise?”
I nodded. “He made me the same promise. He swore he’d get rid of you in a year. I would never have done this if I thought I’d get stuck with you.”
He bitterly laughed. “God, that Machinist is a fat fuck.”
- As Michael Wolff is trying to figure out what animal the Internet is, he made one of the most accurate 1-paragraph explanations and I love it, because I myself try to explain it somewhat like that:
For Entrepreneurs (or unemployables) the Internet offered one of the most startling opportunities since – actually, has there been anything to match it? The cost of entry was minimal, the required knowledge base was so idiosyncratic that few could claim a meaningful head start, and there was little or no competition, regulation, or conventional wisdom. It was ground zero: no rules, no religion, no canon, no bullshit. It was startup time. If all else failed, you could still have the satisfaction of having been there; it was like Hollywood in the teens or Detroit in the twenties. A new American industry was being born.
- Another mystery seems to be accompanying the whole story, “Is internet a new medium?”
– I believe no. A website is a medium. So Internet is more like a medium for other media. And no, nothing to match it…
Amazing.