Customer Reviews

The Internet Bubble

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to disagree with the reviewer from Mountain View. Maybe he's in the industry and therefore knows all the inside information that's to be found in this book, but for those of us who are just trying to figure out how best to manage our portfolios, this book is a must.

The Mountain View reviewer says that "much of the book consists of a rehash of familiar and/or obvious information." Well, that information is familiar now precisely because the first edition of Internet Bubble made it so. The Perkins brothers were the first to dissect the financial food chain that
exists between VCs and investment bankers. I read that first edition, and I'm glad I did. It saved me from losing my shirt.

Given their track record, and the fact that I'm still keeping some of my assets in stock, how could I not read the second edition?

As for the Doerr quote, I was frankly amazed to see it, because the Perkins certainly don't treat the guy with kid gloves in the book. Maybe Doerr was just being honest when he called Internet Bubble the best researched book on Silicon Vallley ever. I know I agree.

Like clockwork, these two predicted the burst of the 'bubble' with uncanny detail. While we were all drinking from the magic punchbowl, and listening and dancing to the VC and Ibanker 'sirens' and drums...these two sat on the sidelines and held up a big sign that said, "You are punch drunk with internet juice".

Did we listen? Ironically most of us did not, and many even pushed this book away saying 'I don't want to know what's in there'. It is hard to be popular at a raging party by repeatedly saying 'the party ended Saturday night, it is Tuesday morning, why are you all still here?'.

Like the scene from Titanic where a crew member says, 'Haven't you heard, the ship is sinking and there aren't enough life rafts'...these two have now offered you their prophecies again.

Can you afford not to read this one? I know I can't.

By Jamis MacNiven, Just the pancake guy
I run the lamest bookstore in the world. We have no books and I haven't necessarily read the one I'm reviewing. So what difference does that make? I'll probably outlast Amazon and no one paid any attention to my review of the Internet Bubble in 1999 (at least I didn't) so this is just perfect for our through-the-looking-glass-world of today. OK, maybe I had a peek at the galleys and I can say that The Revised Edition will be an even bigger success then its predecessor. Michael Perkins and his brother Tony are the ultimate insiders as founders of the Red Herring Magazine (the only magazine we carry). These guys simply ran the math and said, in the first edition, (I paraphrase) that we were living in a house of cards so flimsy that when a slight breeze came by the Internet stock market was going to come tumbling down and all the kings horses...
They provided a long list of stocks with the recommendation to sell immediately. I must admit that I was swept away but the promise of unearned riches so I ignored the warning and I was even all set to move my little gray-haired mother into some pretty snappy startups (I had all the hot tips). She was so old fashioned that she decided to buy certificates of deposit, a piece of a Hollywood movie and a trailer park in Santa Barbara. The CD's barely broke 4% and the trailer park moved up smartly but the movie (an embarrassing teen flick) has returned about 250%. And she hasn't even seen the movie! "Is an average net pretax of 140% good?" she asks with a straight face.
The Revised Edition summarizes our fall from grace but also shines light on many new areas of the business from which the next great thing will hopefully emerge.
In Silicon Valley we continue to demonstrate brilliance, toughness and an unquenchable optimism and this means we will learn from the past and keep on creating the future. You would do well to heed the Bubble books and when in doubt, listen to your mother.

The ultimate hypocrisy. Here's a book full of ideas lifted from analysts and magazines, written solely to cash in on a trend. Perkins thinks so little of his advice that he did not follow his own suggestions. His magazine, The Red Herring, is a textbook example of dotcom excesses, bloat and "what goes up must always go up" thinking. Long after publication of the first edition, he was blithely making the same foolish mistakes he warns against in his book. As a result, the magazine went through a series of layoffs and downsizings and continues to teeter on the brink of insolvency.

Tony Perkins is a master of getting invitations to events in Silicon Valley and sucking up to the insiders. But trust me, you do not want to waste your money on this cynical, hypocritical advice from someone who is a business failure.

Note: this review is for the second edition of the book. I have not seen the first edition. The timing of the first edition would probably rate it a higher review.

This book outlines the operations of the technology investment industry, paying particular attention to the Internet-related hype and surrounding activities that arose in the latter half of the 1990s. Chapters are devoted to venture capitalists and to one of its star players (Kleiner Perkins), to the investment banking industry, some particular details on some Internet companies, high-tech investment advice, biotech, and some Trudeau comics.

Industry-watchers will find little new in the book. There are some anecdotes relating to early-stage funding of Netscape, Yahoo and Amazon that may not be widely known. Unfortunately, much of the book consists of a rehash of familiar and/or obvious information. The book is packed with 1-2 sentence quotations from famous or semi-famous players; most of these are mainly truisms and many are utterly redundant. This feels too much like a piece out of a contemporary flashy (but shallow) business magazine.

Who should read this book? Perhaps somebody who knows nothing about venture capital, technology investing, or the information technology and particularly the Internet-related industries. For people familiar with these subjects, the majority of the content will be familiar. Maybe I'll pass this book on to my grandmother.

On the back cover of the book there is a quote from John Doerr: "The Internet Bubble is the best-researched book on Silicon Valley ever!". Apart from being so self-serving (given that Doerr gets a lot of attention in the book), this statement is blatantly false. I've read several books on Silicon Valley and I guarantee you that "Internet Bubble" is not particularly strong in its research. Try "Fire in the Valley" for early history, "Inside Intel" (written without the official sanction of Intel), or anything by Robert X. Cringely. For its length, Tom Wolfe's essay "Two Young Men who Went West" (recently reprinted in Hooking Up) captures the spirit of Silicon Valley better than anything. I believe it was actually written in the early 1980s, but it's so spot-on that it could have been written in 2000.