Customer Reviews

Inside The Cult Of Kibu: And Other Tales Of The Millennial Gold Rush

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(7)

 

 

Just finished this ridiculous faux kiss-and-tell, more from vanity than curiousity. Myself a survivor of the dot-com era and ex-employee of Kibu, I was curious to see a historical review of the times in general and my former employer in particular.

The dot-com era was absurd. I knew it, and so did my friends at other companies. Not many actually believed the dreams being sold to investors, but like the merchants who sold shovels to the miners of the California Gold Rush, we were happy to play along. This "Inside the Cult" is a grating and inaccurate retelling of some of the excesses of the time. It has several humorous anecdotes.

My own experience with dot-coms was limited to Kibu, my tenure beginning just before Ms Gottlieb's and ending just after her departure. As one of the few men in the organization, it is interesting to compare our experiences; for me it was a pecular workplace for which I was dispassionate, for Ms. Gottlieb, a social trauma. As with her previous writings of the matter, the section on Kibu is written from the point of view of the caustic and unpopular seventh-grade girl that the nice kids ignored. Imagine the balance and accuracy of an expose written by that girl and you will understand the telling of Kibu in this tale.

Not having first-hand knowledge of the rest of the telling, I cannot adequately judge the stories not directly about Kibu. But if the recounting of the rest of the dot-com stories is as accurate as this, I cannot consider it anything but fiction.

The delicious irony of this book is that it exists. While its telling indirectly condemns the times for excess, wastefulness and lack of meaningful contribution, Ms. Gottlieb's book is a second-order effect: it continues in that same dot-com tradition, riding on the digital coattails of a well-recognized flop, this book a product of even less meaning.

If you are looking for historical accuracy, try Michael Lewis' interesting read, "The New New Thing". If you are looking for humor, try David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty" (his tales are probably closer to accuracy). If you are looking for a spiteful whine by someone with bruised ego, you'll love this book.

For a book classified as "business" this book spends a remarkably small amount of time discussing business. Instead, Inside the Cult of Kibu is a collection of anecdotes from Gottlieb's experiences at Kibu and others' experiences working at dot-coms and in the dot-com world.

The book's greatest strength is clearly its organization: each of the ten chapters contains anecdotes regarding only one topic, ranging from hiring to IPOs to layoffs and the post-dot-com. The book is an enjoyable read composed of brief stories held together by Gottlieb's and Jabobs' commentary. Each chapter starts with Gottlieb's experience at Kibu which gives what would otherwise have been a very scattered book a consistent flow and feeling.

As enjoyable as it is to read; however, at the end the book leaves the reader with little else than a sense of the absurdity of the whole dot-com bubble. There is no discussion of why dot-coms failed, or even why some gathered the "cult" following that they did. Instead, the book might be best described as the transcription of a bar conversation: every few minutes you will laugh, but at the end of the night you really haven't gotten a whole lot out of it.

If you were part of the dot-com euphoria, than you probably will enjoy the book as a memoir. If however, you are trying to learn about, understand or analyze, you will be left severely disappointed by Inside the Cult of Kibu.

... The book is mostly just a collection of anecdotes from dot.com dweebs. Some are very funny and insightful.

However, most of the book is basically the same pretentious self-important name-dropping and glad-handing that that defined the whole dot.com era. Many of the anecdotes are pretentious "remember whens" from people with weapons-grade arrogance. Its funny to listen to self-important 30-somethings bash self-important 20-somethings, as if the 30-somethings, because they worked at Wendy's after college, somehow have this deep well of wisdom the 20-somethings don't. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man will be king.

I also became a bit tired of reading sob stories from individuals who obviously live lives of extreme privilege bemoan the burden of managing morons and chaos. When I hear these well-to-do ex-dot.commers whine about mismanagement and stupidity its hard to have any sympathy for them. They never had to really suffer or work; they just rode the wave and didn't win.

Okay, I am being a bit harsh. And my reaction is really why I gave this book 3 starts. As pretentious, preening, and self-important as this book is - it does a pretty good job of capturing exactly why the dot.com era was such a joke.

This isn't a bad book, or a great book. It's interesting, its a quick read, and its got some good points. Just be prepared to wade through the pretentious BS.

If there is a compelling story in the "millennial gold rush," these authors haven't found it. Lori's story about her experiences at Kibu is thin, so she and Jesse Jacobs have bolstered it with lots of interviews with other dot-com veterans about such topics as "the parties" or "the lingo." None of it is well-organized, the players are hard to keep track of, and it's very hard in general to care about these greedy, self-centered people.

Lori leaves medical school for a job at Kibu because, as she freely admits, she's hoping to make millions off company stock. That's the motivation of virtually everyone in the book -- though a few occasionally profess some passion for the work, everybody's generally interested in looking important, going to swanky parties, and quickly getting rich. The interviews with various other dot-commers seem to be transcribed without editing -- they're full of "and then I was like...and then she was like" - type language that's annoying and sometimes impenetrable. The choppy assembly of the interviews doesn't cohere well as a whole, and some of what's presented is contradictory (one person will swear funding for Internet startups was ridiculously easy to come by, then another will say that is just a myth). The authors were apparently unable to get any really successful (read: really interesting) Internet veterans to contribute to the book. Though she is sometimes self-deprecating, Lori herself comes off as trying too hard to be hip, and the fact that she got fired before the company folded makes a reader wonder if she's just bitter, and that's the source of some of the unflattering portrayals of everyone else she worked with.

This book was written in only five months, and the haste shows. There are some amusing anecdotes here and there, but as a whole it's a real waste of time.

Ms. Gottlieb has suceeded only in writing a book that reveals more about the self-centered, whiny author than about the downfall of the company itself. If she was indeed a "typical" employee, then it's quite clear what ONE of the major problems was with the company.

It's a shame too, because the story of the "dot com bust" is actually worthy of a well-researched dispassionate analysis. This is not it. It reads more like the rantings of a self-involved drama queen than the writings of an author with anything meaningful to say.

Like many other readers and reviewers, I was expecting a lot more from this book. That being said, I've really got only myself to blame. The author makes no secret that she had only three months experience at Kibu. I'm not sure that I should have expected much more than this often trite, sometimes amusing third-person collection of anecdotes.

It's too bad, it would have been a great book. I just hope that she's not serious when she talks in the introduction about film offers. You could take all the substantive moments of this book, shoot them in real-time and not fill one reel.

Let's start with the good stuff: "Inside the Cult of Kibu" is an entertaining tour through the rise and fall of dot-com mania, charting the web's (by now) oft-told tale of enthusiasm, hubris, willful blindness, greed and ultimate downfall... There's much more that could be said about the rise and fall of the dotcoms - the book virtually ignores the B2B story and some of the craziest moments of the era - office landlords demanding friends-and-family stock as a perverse kind of "key money" to secure office space! Perhaps only Tom Wolfe could do justice to it all. So ... it's an OK read, and a fast one, but don't put down any major projects to pick this one up.

The Cult of Kibu is a slow painful read about the bygone times of the internet craze. The authors go through a pianfully boring and unfunny recollection of a world that is clearly something they are not familiar with. Having experienced the rush and been part of an internet company I would recommend "Starving to Death on 200 million" - it is a much more accurate and entertaining account of this time period....

Fantastic insider story about bunch of idiots within the Internet bubble. Must read for everybody who wants to know what internet buble was, about stupidity that supported its creation and short lasting existence, and the reason of fall

Absolutely fun to read!

Woud give 6 stars!

If you enjoy publications such as The National Inquirer - then you'll eat this up.
Amusing - yes.
Accurate - well, it wouldn't be nearly so fascinating if the facts were not inflated to fuel the highest levels of the avid readers' page-turning disbelief.