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I personally liked the part about Silicon Valley. After reading this book, people who are constantly chasing the next hot IPOs may wake up and realize that most of the money has already been made by the founders, venture capitalists, and investment bankers, before leftovers are served for the public.- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market. I read this book because I am a fan of Michael Lewis, and I enjoyed reading Liar's Poker and Moneyball. I found it very educational to learn how an idea can be taken from scratch and at the end sold in the public markets through an IPO. Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market This book is about Jim Clark and Silicon Valley. Clark was an unsuccessful college professor who founded three billion-dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon.
The stories did not quite make a coherent whole. Michael Lewis went against the conventional wisdom at the time and described in a series of tales the transformational powers of the web still being played out. However, the observations were relevant.In terms of writing, this book does not compare favorably to the master piece "Liar's Poker." Therefore, I give it a 3 star. One has to remember that this book was written during the burst of the Internet bubble. At that time, the general view is that the Internet bubble were purely speculative and would not have any lasting impact.
Instead he's given hundreds of millions of dollars of investors money on business plans and ideas written on what feels like restaurant napkins. It's all about the boat. Along the way Clark makes a zillion dollars and gets investment money as easily as turning on a tap. Until the next New New Thing comes along.
One thinks that if Clark could rewrite the laws of the universe, he would. Or at least start a company with investors money to try and do it, float it on the NASDAQ then live off the profits. And how no matter how big Clark sees or wants something, there are still physical laws that limit him. Clark however doesn't forget the small people who have helped him along the way and makes sure that stock options are given out to those slaving over the hot keyboards.All through the book though, Clark's dream of owning the biggest sail boat ever holds the story together and act as a message of the size of the plans Clark has.
That is, (a) suffer from ADD (or is it ADHD)., and know when to spin the message way beyond hyperbole. They had the very, very high life. Here, Michael Lewis follows the career of Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics (now SGI), Netscape (now, well, something else) and then Healtheon (something else again). Lewis, the writer, seems to be dragged along for the ride hanging on for dear life.Reading it now, after the IT crash of 2001 and the General Collapse of 2008, I have no pity for how any of those people might be suffering now.
Had he been 15 years old, he'd have been put on a cocktail of drugs and told to sit in the corner and be quiet. Although this book is quite old now (in terms of Internet years) the same basic lessons seem to be applicable in today's (well, until 2008s crash anyway) environment. Clark comes across as a super-intelligent hyperactive child.
Jim Clark is after markets worth billions of dollars, and strives to stay ahead of the curve by identifying business opportunities that Microsoft has not yet seized.- the ability to repeatably create a product or service. Michael Lewis is to the dot-com era what F. Readers who find management books profoundly boring and uninteresting can still be attracted to this story, which evokes at times Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby. Jim Clark is compared to a conceptual artist who comes up with the idea and let the other do all the actual work.- the ability to reinvent oneself. Jim Clark becomes disinterested as soon as his ventures take off the ground, and very soon moves on to the next challenge.- It's OK to Fail. Jim Clark started with a chip that allowed computer to do 3D graphics, then moved on to pioneering the browser business with Netscape, then his attention turned to the healthcare market and then again to personal finance, markets for which he offered innovative business models.- the ability to repeatably motivate individuals/teams and build an entire organization to follow in his/her pursuit.
Scott Fitzgerald was to the Jazz Age. This book could easily be transposed as an academic study in a scholarly journal or as a "how to" article in one of those business school reviews that cater to the deep anxieties of high-powered executives. The same material that Michael Lewis has collected could be used by an academic to formulate hypotheses, validate theories, and construct models of business behavior. As an observer remarks, this is clearly a bad trait if you stick to your guns when you're clearly wrong, but Jim Clark and his team of bright engineers were "almost always right".- Leave When the Party Starts.
When Clark assembled a team of engineers to "fix the US health care system", as the team leader acknowledges, "no one knew a fucking thing about health care".- Stick To Your Guns. It doesn't really matter what the company is trying to sell, so long as it is identified as an Internet company. The same engineers who spent months designing an unmarketable device could then be drawn into his next venture.- Never Look Back. As the internet boom has now receded into the past, this book will remain as a monument to the follies and hopes of the internet bubble era.
That is precisely the lesson that a serial entrepreneur like Jim Clark never learns.But of course Michael Lewis' book has very little in common with a business review article. As the author notes, "other people grew old, he stayed new".Or the article could list the lessons that one learns from creating more than three successful ventures:- Don't Draw Business Plans. "I don't give a shit about the past", says Clark.- When to Stop. In fact, a growing subset of management science deals with the phenomenon that Lewis describes in his narrative and that is known in the academic literature as serial entrepreneurship.In this respect, one could very well transform the portrait of Jim Clark into a diagram of the five abilities that a serial entrepreneur needs to cultivate: - the ability to repeatably recognize a market.
Jim Clark predicted that the future of information technology laid in interactive TV, then let others face disaster on the basis of his failed diagnosis. - Don't Fall In Love With The Product. People joined the bandwagon because Jim Clark offered them the promise to become incredibly rich, but also because his ventures were simply the place to be in the Silicon Valley.- the ability to delegate and surround themselves with talent that complements their own. Jim Clark's notion of a business plan is to identify a trillion dollar-worth market, gather enough bright people and throw them at the problem so that something good will come out of it.
The book becomes focused on the attempt to get Clark's newest technology-laden boat ready for an Atlantic crossing; hardly what I'm guessing Lewis set out to write. Here was a guy who had traipsed through the daunting world of technology with a seeming Midas touch. It doesn't seem like Clark won't open up to Lewis, it's more like he's a one-dimensional guy. As I read the book, however, something strange happened, I started wondering, "When did Michael Lewis realize he was following the most improbably boring man in the world." Jim Clark should be fascinating; he starts huge companies and turns venture capitalists on their ears, he flies helicopters, rides motorcycles and builds ludicrously complex, large and expensive sailboats.
I'm a big fan of Michael Lewis. The crossing itself turns out to be a non-event and unfortunately the book does to. Lewis writes the book in a way that indicates that he's an author that knows he's got nothing but has invested far too much time in research to try to turn back. He usually brings characters and situations to life and provides a perspective on a situation that introduces me to a new way of looking at things.
Jim Clark is a man who is never satisfied and always striving for the "New, New Thing." Yet somehow, Jim Clark is also apparently stone cold dull.In the course of the whole book, not one Jim Clark quote is interesting, entertaining, or insightful. Don't despair though, read Moneyball or Liar's Poker or Blindside and you'll find that Michael Lewis can, and usually does, deliver the goods in spades. That's not the case here.I get the feeling when Michael Lewis got permission to follow Jim Clark around for several months to write about him he thought he'd hit the mother load of great book material. Heck, the man had started Silicon Graphics and Netscape.
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