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Burn Rate : How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet Hardcover – June 24, 1998

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Michael Wolff (Author)
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Michael Wolff (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 90 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 24, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0684848813
  • ISBN-13: 978-0684848815
  • Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #960,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating book about rise and fall of early net co.
By Glenn Fleishman on November 30, 1999
Format: Hardcover
I can see why people were so scathing about it. He doesn't pull punches. He got in bed with financial types he didn't like from the start, and hated by the end. He didn't stay entirely clean himself, and he's surprisingly candid about it. At the end, he is shriven (sort of), leaves the field, walks away from a big pile of money, and returns to writing.
If you read some of the pissy and not so pissy backstory pieces that came out after his book, you're told that he abandoned his employees for his own needs (true, but after many months of pretty much shredding cash, and without any short-term or long-term hope of success). You're also told that he manufactured people, incidents, dialog. Hard to say without having been there. But I've met many people like the people Wolff describes, and I don't doubt that they would act precisely as they are acting in reaction to the book, including denying everything whether true or false.
Brill's Content ran an extremely fatuous piece back in October 1998 that moves me to profanity when I read it; it's attack journalism without balance. The piece quoted many parties' gripes with the book without confirmation except from other parties with gripes. Wolff wrote a pretty funny story about getting the pin stuck in him as Brill tried to maneuver him into the formaldehyde.
It's still unclear to me why people don't want to believe his account of events. I don't know if it's true, but my descent into the Internet maelstrom, during which I met or worked with many interesting content and ecommerce types, confirms the tenor of what he describes. I'm inclined to think that a little dramatic license and a lot of fact inform the book.
A number of reviewers (and Amazon.com customers) describe Wolff's ego as enormous. I don't see it.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsSecret Ceremonies of Internet Financing Revealed!
By A Customer on September 16, 1999
Format: Paperback
Believe it or not, not every Internet entreprenuer gets out with a successful IPO. Wolff, a true New Media pioneer, gives us a marvelous insider's view that a winner simply could not provide, and the book is such a great, insightful read, I'm glad he failed so that we can get this peek. So much more than sour grapes, Wolff burns bridges and shows all the players with their masks off, himself included.
A book like this will always receive negative reviews from types who can't trust the motives of anyone who didn't come out a winner, but these same people readily accept as gospel any puff piece that states Steve Case's visionary genius built AOL rather than the marketing side kick with the simple idea sneak into American homes and fill the sock drawers with start up disks. Not every story is pretty, not every success is the inevitable result of brilliance and elbow grease. Do not write off this work because Wolff's business didn't work out. Rather, enjoy his sadder but wiser perspective. Enjoy a glimpse of everything that happens to successes, also, but somehow never makes it into the Business Week cover story.
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5.0 out of 5 starsthis is the real thing
By A Customer on November 13, 1999
Format: Paperback
I think I've read everything about this business--Po Bronson and Michael Lewis books most recently--and nothing anywhere compares to Burn Rate. First of all, Wolff, either fearless or crazy, doesn't suck up to anybody. Second, this is not just good writing, this is amazing; you start to read the sentences outloud they're so good all kinds of memorable lines stay with you. Third, Wolff's book is about character, the real stuff that makes people do what they do; you recognize the people here, you understand them, they're real--they aren't some model people who inhabit Silicon Valley and the Internet Industry (Lewis's book the New New Thing is all about inventing that sort of model). Burn Rate is brilliant. It makes you sweat it's so good.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe best book on the web
By David Horgan on December 21, 1999
Format: Paperback
Bored with pulp novels but not ready for a serious tome? My book of the year is Michael Wolff's Burn Rate. This is a grunt's view of the early internet battles. Wolff is predatory in his language, honest in his insecurity, writes well but actually knows his stuff. You'll learn & have a belly laugh. Add it to Liar's Poker, Up the Organization & Feargal Quinn's Crowning the Customer as must-reads.
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4.0 out of 5 starsA View from the Trenches
By Penner on April 21, 2003
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This book is about Wolff's short-lived foray into Internet entrepreneurship in the mid-90s. In addition to recounting his own company's fortunes, he seems to have been tuned in to just about everything that was going on with the net industry, so it's a great overview of the whole cyber-landscape too. Mainly, it's a chronicle of the moment when the Internet shifted from being a marginalized geekfest to being Big Business.
He has great chapters on Wired magazine, on AOL, on Microsoft, and on his own attempts to secure venture capital for his company. The third chapter, "The Art of the Deal," was hysterically funny and thoroughly horrifying at the same time. At first I thought, reminiscing, that I was at perfectly the right age to have taken advantage of the Internet boom, if I'd had the presence of mind. But then, as I read further, I became more and more relieved that I'd never done so.
This book was published before most of the recent upheavals in the Internet world: The ascendancy and hegemony of IE in the browser wars (after Netscape effectively abdicated); AOL's ill-fated acquisition of Time Warner; and, of course, the "dot-bomb" to which many of us owe our current unemployed status. The book, therefore, lacks the scope and perspective of a historical document, but is very much a "view from the trenches" look at the way it seemed to a smart and thoughtful (and literary) guy who was there.
One of my primary reactions was of nostalgia. Ah, remember when AOL was Mac-only? Not only that, but it was only one of several available online communities: Delphi, Prodigy, CompuServe, Sierra... Remember when it seemed like there were only five of us who knew that AOL and the Internet were not the same thing? Remember when there was no Web? Remember when there was no Amazon.com?Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 starsI don't know much about the author. But he ...

I don't know much about the author. But he wrote too verbosely about too obvious things.
Doesn't have a sincerity.

Published 15 months ago by Jdon
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat read. For someone like me who was too ...

Great read. For someone like me who was too young for the first Tech bubble it provides good insight into what people were thinking at the time.

Published 21 months ago by Simon J Newton
3.0 out of 5 starsinteresting but long

"The Burn Rate " starts quite slow for the first half of the book. Things pick up a little, but the big problem is no one knows really understands where the whole internet... Read more

Published on April 10, 2014 by Carol Schreiber
4.0 out of 5 starsWhy I rate Burn Rate 4

It's about that time about ten years ago - those thrilling days of yesteryear - when the Web was new, that's the time well captured in Burn Rate by Michael Wolff. Read more

Published on August 25, 2006 by Jack Vaughan
2.0 out of 5 starsA little dippy

While I don't know the whole story, Wolff seems to have a lot of experience, and little business smarts. Read more

Published on April 6, 2006 by themblues
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting story of the very early internet years

I really liked this book and got to learn about the hardships entrepreneurs go through in a startup. Read more

Published on January 29, 2004 by Romin Cyrus Irani
3.0 out of 5 starsHow to survive having a few megabucks thrown to you

Next up: How Donald Trump survived his Daddy's money, How Nelson Rockefeller survived the shadow of his family's name, how George Bush survived his years of failing oil... Read more

Published on August 16, 2003 by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsJuicy, Funny Tell-All of the Dot Com Era

As a former worker in the Internet world, I found this book both a juicy read, and laugh-out-loud (lol) funny. Wolff spares no one in this account, least of all himself. Read more

Published on June 12, 2003 by Julia L. Wilkinson
4.0 out of 5 starsExcellent writing + pretty good story = 4 star book

The main thing I took away from this book was how impressed I was by Wolff's writing skills. He has a very absorbing way to describe people and events. Read more

Published on April 18, 2002 by brazos49
4.0 out of 5 starsProbably Funnier if You Weren't There

This book, written in 1998 about a company that collapsed in 1997, is quite prescient in many aspects except in the implicit assumption in the subtitle that the "gold rush... Read more

Published on March 23, 2002 by Amazon Customer

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