About the Book
Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good - The captivating story of the mavericks who emerged from the dotcom rubble to found the multibillion-dollar companies taking the Web into the twenty-first century.
Everyone has heard the story of the Internet Bubble. Beginning with Netscape’s blockbuster IPO in 1996, billions of dollars flowed into Internet startups, and companies with no revenues and shaky business plans earned sky-high valuations on Wall Street. It was the era of paper millionaires, $800 office chairs, and Super Bowl ads for dotcoms that no one had ever heard of. Then in 2000 the Bubble burst, with the Nasdaq losing 75% of its value and hundreds of companies closing up shop. It was all written off to “irrational exuberance,” and everyone moved on.
Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good is the story of the entrepreneurs who never gave up on the Internet d! ream. Instead, they learned their lesson from the Bust and in recent years have created groundbreaking new Web companies. The first wave Internet companies—sites like Amazon and eBay—simply moved offline commerce online. But the second iteration of the dotcoms—dubbed Web 2.0—is all about bringing people together. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace unite friends online; YouTube lets anyone posts videos for the world to see; Digg.com allows Internet users to vote on the most relevant news of the day; Six Apart sells software that enables bloggers to post their viewpoints online; and Slide helps people customize their virtual selves.
Business reporter Sarah Lacy chronicles the lives of several different people trying to get their dreams off the ground. Max Levchin, the savvy founder of PayPal, looks for another hit with a “web widget” company. Kevin Rose tries to grow his “social news” site Digg.com while ! playing the part of Web 2.0 poster boy. Marc Andreesen, the legendary founder of Netscape, comes back to the game seeking to found his third billion-dollar company. Mark Zuckerberg watches Facebook grow from his dorm room at Harvard into one of the most powerful sites on the Web as he tries to avoid the spotlight. While following these entrepreneurs, Lacy brings to light the entire Web 2.0 scene: the wide-eyed but wary founders of startups, the hated venture capitalists, the bloggers fueling the hype, the programmers coding through the night on Red Bull and takeout, the twenty-something millionaires, and the internet “fan boys” eager for all the promises to come true.
A gripping narrative of the next generation of dreamers in the fabled Valley, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good is a bold look at the future of the web.
"With the collapse of the Internet Bubble, the mainstream media wrote off Silicon Valley and the dot.com world as dead stories – and thus missed the birth of an even bigger and more far-reaching Web phenomenon: on-line communities and social networks, the so-called Web 2.0. Happily, one intrepid reporter, Sarah Lacy, stayed on -- and she now has given us what will likely be the only real record of what happened during that remarkable era. Her portrayals of the founders of companies such as Facebook and Twitter are dead-on, and her reporting will no doubt be a vital source on this amazing time for generations to come. "
– Michael S. Malone, author of Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company
Table of Contents
- Prologue
- Winning is Everything
- Bubbling Back Up
- Fuck the Sweater-Vests
- Lemmings at the Gate
- The Mob Giveth and the Mob Taketh Away
- The Return of the King
- The Mark Zuckerberg Phenomenon
- World Domination
- Midtown Doornail
- Sell Out
- The Nontrepreneur
- Epilogue
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
