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eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work Kindle Edition
For two roller-coaster years, Stross had total access not only to Benchmark's executives but to the companies they financed. He was a fly on the wall as fortunes were made in an instant, snap decisions got locked in, and new ventures took off--and sometimes crashed. Here are the testosterone-pumped conversations, round-the-clock meetings, and gutsy deals that launched the eBoys and their clients into the stratosphere of mega-wealth. Written like a novel but absolutely true, eBOYS brings to vivid life the glory days of the greatest business adventure of our time.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown Currency
- Publication dateMarch 1, 2001
- File size1316 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Stross is a gifted storyteller who weaves the personal histories of the Benchmark partners with stories of how the firm came to back such companies as Priceline.com and Webvan. We meet guys who weren't born to privilege, men who took unconventional routes into the venture capital business. Probably the most intriguing is Dave Beirne, a hyperaggressive executive recruiter who went into the business after realizing venture capitalists are the ones who really call the shots at high-tech start-ups. We also see the problems Silicon Valley guys have when they try to dot-com the bricks-and-mortar world. The short tale of an aborted partnership between Benchmark and Toys 'R' Us illustrates why the old economy is so mystified by the new.
Anyone interested in how business works should find something of interest in eBoys. From the organizational structure and corporate culture of Benchmark to the histories and personalities of its partners to its adventures in the world of Internet start-ups, it's a digital snapshot that reveals how successful businesses look, think, and mine gold in today's economy. --Lou Schuler
Review
--The Washington Post Book World
"A RING-SIDE SEAT AT A SINGULAR MOMENT IN BUSINESS HISTORY."
--The Wall Street Journal
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
Randall Stross, author of acclaimed books on Microsoft and Steve Jobs, blends a business historian's perspective with a journalist's flair for suspenseful storytelling to look at wealth creation up close. For two years, Stross gained unprecedented access to the venture capitalists at Benchmark, an upstart firm founded by thirtysomething renegades whose average height happens to be 6´5´´. Since Benchmark's founding in 1995, each partner's net worth has increased, on average, $100 million annually.
Stross was present as the Benchmark boys debated which businesses to support, and by recounting their conversations in testosterone-rich detail, he offers readers the most precise and en
From the Back Cover
"This is the one--the book about Silicon Valley we've all been waiting for. Randall Stross is the first journalist to truly crack the code, to get so far inside this world that what's emerged is not just an authoritative account but one that has the absolute ring of truth. With its vividly drawn characters, unforgettable scenes, and crackling dialogue, eBoys puts you in the room where instant companies--and instant wealth--are created. And when this age finally ends--as it surely will--eBoys will take its place as the definitive account of one of the wildest eras in the history of American capitalism."--Joseph Nocera, editor-at-large, Fortune
"Randall Stross's eBoys is that rare book that's both an important work and a fun read. The Silicon Valley venture capitalists whom Stross writes about with such verve and grace are the equivalent of the tech world's Hollywood casting directors, holding daily tryouts to spot tomorrow's talent. The miracle of this book is that somehow we're in the room as some of the best known VCs in the Valley audition the future. The result is not only a rich, page-turning tale but a voyeur's dream that for my money is the single best look at the VC world to date."--Gary Rivlin, author of The Plot to Get Bill Gates
"This book is so realistic that if you have been in a venture capital meeting it will make you sweaty all over again. eBoys is a terrifically written account of venture capitalists in action, financing the investor dreams or nightmares of the future with high-flying e-business companies like Webvan and eBay and more." The book is a great read."--Jack Covert, president and founder, 800-CEO-READ
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The venture capital firm that in the end backed eBay was Benchmark Capital, itself a start-up, then only two years old. When Benchmark invested $6.7 million in eBay in 1997, the auction company's valuation was put at $20 million. eBay grew, prospered, went public. In September 1998, after the first day of public trading, eBay's market capitalization was $2 billion, and Benchmark's original $6.7 mil-lion stake was now worth $400 million. Little more than three months later, the stock had gained more than 1,300 percent. By the next spring, the company was valued at more than $21 billion; the value of Benchmark's stake had grown 100,000 percent in less than two years' time, making it the Valley's best-performing venture investment ever. The eBay story happened to unfold right in front of my eyes -- and my tape recorder; I must confess I was as surprised as anyone.
A year before eBay knocked on Benchmark Capital's door, I had knocked there, interested in writing a book about a corner of the financial world whose inner workings remained shrouded, even to those in other precincts of professional money management. Yet venture capitalists, who were concentrated in Silicon Valley, were entrusted with ever increasing amounts of capital by institutions, such as university endowments and charitable foundations, to invest in newly formed companies. In 1996 venture funds attracted $10 billion in capital; in 1997 the total jumped to $20 billion; and in 1998 it passed $26 billion.
It was a form of investing that brought higher risk than investing in shares of publicly traded companies found in the stock market, but it offered the prospect of higher returns, too. As for the venture capitalists, they received a significant cut -- at least 20 percent -- of any resulting gains in the portfolio's investments, so in flush times their personal wealth, on paper at least, grew as fast as the valuations of the new companies they funded.
Anyone who had followed the rise of Netscape, Amazon, and Yahoo -- all were venture-backed -- had already figured out that the venture guys were seated at the center of the New Economy. Endowment-fund managers who had not previously developed connections to the top venture capital firms pounded their fists on closed doors, begging for entry, but even with recent increases in size, the funds were already oversubscribed.
Business-school graduates headed to Silicon Valley in numbers never seen before, spurning six-figure salaries with management consulting firms to seek their fortunes with venture-backed start-ups. It appeared that entrepreneurial fever was spreading well beyond business schools, too. One in twelve American adults surveyed in the spring of 1999 said that they were at that moment trying to found a new business, and some unknowable multiple of that number surely daydreamed of such. Entrepreneurship was increasingly touted as a panacea, the best means of fighting poverty, according to advocates in nonprofit initiatives that sprang up to teach entrepreneurship in neighborhood classes, schools -- even in kindergartens.
And all of these entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs and institutional investors and individual investors -- the entire money culture -- trained their attention on the venture capitalists, who were the gatekeepers to the world of high-tech start-ups, the place where new firms grew the fastest and investors reaped the greatest returns. The venture guys made decisions that appeared to have oracular power. By the approach of the year 2000, the venture guys comprised the symbolically preeminent profession that served to define the zeitgeist in the nineties in the same way that investment bankers had in the eighties, investigative journalists had in the seventies, and hippies -- as the antiprofession -- had in the sixties.
Product details
- ASIN : B000FC1HTG
- Publisher : Crown Currency; 1st edition (March 1, 2001)
- Publication date : March 1, 2001
- Language : English
- File size : 1316 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 352 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #638,263 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #48 in Venture Capital (Kindle Store)
- #328 in Company Histories
- #541 in Biographies of Business Professionals
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The book is written in strong and very engaging narrative, I spent a few days of my vacation at a sunny resort...under a shade umbrella reading this book (the water slide had to wait !). The eBay story alone was facinating, as was the previous histories of each of the founders...and there was more ! I recommend this book to anyone who understands the silicon valley "environment", also to those having a sincere wish to do so.
I think it is worth reading when you are an insider but not necessarily as an outsider.
The story is well-told and gives you an insider's view of how at least one venture capital firm makes the decision of who gets funding and who doesn't. It also serves as a cautionary tale about how even the most sophisticated investors get sucked into bubble mentality.
A valuable read for investors, entreprenuers, and aspiring venture capitalists.
Benchmark annually sifts through the 1000s of business plans to fund a handful of dot.com startups to IPO, as described in the entertaining well-referenced chapters covering billion-dollar startups like eBay and Webvan, as well as others like: Tristata, Toys-R-Us, Red Hat, Scient, Priceline, ePhysician, newwatch.com, art.com etc...
Possible improvements include: portrayal of global context; more statistical evidence/facts about VCs/startups/etc..; significant objective analysis & reflection of events; and formatting to include summaries/lists etc.. (like `Confessions of a Venture Capitalist' by Quindlen). These would help the reader use the information rather than just be entertained by the storyline.
Overall an intelligently, well-written, `fly-on-the-wall' tale gamely capturing much of the passion, technology and business acumen/judgment exhibited by a likeable & lucky, hard-working company with integrity. More entertaining than useful to most business readers- hence the only average rating.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2020