The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel (Hardcover)

by Po Bronson (Author) "Oh, God. No sooner had Francis Benoit started explaining to this reporter the difference between the ISA and PCI electrical standards when the reporter's head..." (more)
Key Phrases: other ironmen, secretary school, Lloyd Acheson, Francis Benoit, Hank Menzinger (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Bronson's last novel, Bombardiers, was wonderful, so it comes as no surprise that his latest novel is just marvelous. What does it take for entrepreneurs to risk everything, develop a product, start a company, and take it public? When social idealism, corporate politics, petty jealousies, money fever--all part of the business landscape in Silicon Valley--meet, the results make for a fun, fast-paced read. And if you're familiar with the culture of Silicon Valley, you'll find yourself asking if this is a novel or a chronicle of the times. Just make sure you clear your calendar before picking up this book--you won't be doing anything else until you finish.

From Library Journal
A former bond salesman who now chairs Consortium Booksales & Distribution, Bronson made his first $20 million (well, maybe not that much) with his best-selling debut, Bombardiers (LJ 11/1/94). In his new work, billed as a Silicon Valley novel, an ambitious young drudge at a research lab is handed a project that could land him in the top ranks?design a computer that will sell for $300.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 291 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679456996
• ISBN-13: 978-0679456995
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,758,182 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun, Fun, Fun . . . then Fizzle, June 27, 2004

By	Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest: A Novel (Paperback)

Author and Silicon Valley insider, Po Bronson, writes a very funny novel about four quirky guys with the right stuff who want to create something that matters in the realm of computers. From cutting edge software and hardware development companies to Palo Alto think tanks, the plot follows the creation of a less than $300 computer from a list of low priority projects at the think tank level to the actual modeling of a prototype that gets one rival top dog engineer's undies in a knot. The trials and tribulations that face the group compare to the highs and lows of an EKG with enough back-stabbing, personality manipulation and corporate espionage to keep the reading at a wonderous pace up until the last 20 or so pages. The crafting of the dramatic persona, especially the four progtammer/hardware specialists hinges closely to the usual stereotypical portrayals of techno geeks seen in movies and television shows. However this does not detract from the fun level of the story; indeed one gets the sense that these portrayal closely model reality. What does detract is the rather abrupt ending which winds down what could have been an all out page-turning business adventure with a stop-on-a-dime conclusion that certainly did not satisfy me.

Perhaps having seen the rather burlesque film version of this novel, I naively was expecting more bells and whistles and a more thorough troncing of rival engineer and threat Benoit. It never came, but perhaps that is due to the fact that I know nothing about the world of Silicon Valley where Bronson's could-be spoofs on the computer industry's behind the scenes star would lose their bite. Happily, the novel does not force a romance between Caspar and his housemate as in the movie version; here the attraction is noted and the reader can use his imagination to determine the outcome. Thank you, Po.

All in all, I enjoyed the novel; I just wish it had a longer ending.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Realistic, entertaining, lucid, upbeat, December 17, 1998

By	Steve Sailer (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest:: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

Po Bronson's first novel, Bombardiers, a slightly surrealistic satire on bond salesmen, was a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It won some plaudits for its literary ambitiousness, but Bronson's overkill on the pointlessness of his characters' lives left a bit of a sour taste. This novel, a fictionalized story of the inventions of the Network PC and Java by a small Silicon Valley start-up, is far less stylized, but the characters are more likable, idealistic, and inspiring. This is to Bombardiers as Wolfe's The Right Stuff was to his Bonfire.

The depiction of computer nerds strikes me as realistic and sympathetic, although I'm sure not all Silicon Valley geeks appreciate the portraits. I also liked another realistic touch: there is no sex in the novel, and almost no women characters. This contrasts well with the other Silicon Valley start-up novel, Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, which starts out with a terrific portrait of life as a sleep-deprived minion of Bill Gates, then degenerates into a pilot for a sit-com that could be pitched as "It's like the cast of 'Friends' starts a software company."

I was especially impressed by how Bronson set up certain characters to be the villians of the plot, then showed us that from inside their heads they see themselves, with some justification, as the good guys. The conclusion is quite surprising: the most Machiavellian of the bad guys gets exactly what he was conniving for (a huge investment by a venture capital firm), then has to live with the bureaucratic consequences. I ended up feeling quite sorry about his plight.

Bronson is probably the most true-blue member of the small School of Wolfe (Richard Price is the senior member, with Jay McInerney floating in and out). I haven't yet figured out whether he has a huge amount of literary talent, or whether he'll simply be a very useful recorder of The Way We Live Now, but in either case he's worth reading. One big threat to his chances of becoming a great novelist is that he is probably the most handsome novelist since Hemingway, and that can cause no end of trouble.

Steve Sailer

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun look at Silicon Valley high-tech agenda & gamesmanship, April 1, 1997

By A Customer

The First $20 Million is a pretty cool look at the Silicon Valley tech roller coaster and the behind-the-scenes bull**** that keep the best products and technology safely inside start-ups and development labs and out of the hands of end-users.

The story is about a group inside one think tank that is attempting to develop an inexpensive personal computer, much to the dismay of the rest of the company and to outside interests whose profitability would be hurt by such a development.

The plot is apparently very close to real events in the valley, with a few clearly identifiable Silicon Valley characters. One high-profile figure was apparently ruffled enough by the book to criticize it publicly, which makes reading it all the more appealing. The novel works on its own as a clever, enjoyable story without the need for a "wink-wink" cognoscenti perspective.

This book is part high-tech intrigue and part "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," although the characters in this novel have less of the self-conscious, almost contrived quirkiness of those in Bronson's Bombardiers.

In both books, Bronson demonstrates a genuine insider's knowledge of his subject matter. (When he runs out of former careers will he run out of novels?)In $20 Million, he is perhaps the first novelist to craft 3-dimensional engineers and programmers, dispelling some of our myths about computer "geeks" with pencil-pockets, while simultaneously confirming some of them.

$20 Million is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, with interesting characters and a cynical, high-tech perspective.