|
The Dinner Club
 |
Author: Shannon Henry
List Price: $26.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0743222156
Publisher: Free Press (08 October, 2002)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 111,128
Average Customer Rating: 3.1 out of 5
|
Customer ReviewsRating: 3 out of 5
Personalities
As is the case with a lot of business reporting, this is personality-driven. Capital Investors consisted of a group of friends mainly working in the technology sector and situated in Washington, D.C. Michael Maccoby called Capital Investors productive narcissists. There were twenty six members of the all male club. In Washington there is proximity to political and economic elites. Social networking was a chief reason to keep attending the group functions. The friendships were calculated. Exclusive investing groups are rare. A woman has said that in times of economic turmoil, Capital Investors has become a support group. Investing clubs and other tech networking groups served as social interaction during the rise of the technology sector businesses. Steve Case called 2000 the internet century. In the late 1990's AOL was talking to everyone, treating everything as a possible acquisition. In a market frenzy one should know that if everyone is getting into your business, it is time to sell. In the year 2000 in the tech world there was a blinders-on overworked mentality prevailing. By 2001 talk shifted to pink slips, the dearth of venture capital, the market. In the downturn the group's portfolio of companies was fading. In March 2000 MicroStrategy was advised by its auditors it had to restate earnings for two previous years. The stock price fell by sixty per cent in one day. The CEO of the company, Michael Saylor, was one of the members of the dinner club, Capital Investors. Among the Capital Investors, Saylor fell the hardest. Other members of the group include the afore-mentioned Steve Case, James Kimsey, Art Marks, Mario Moreno, Alex Mandl, Jeong Kim, Bill Melton, Raul Fernandez, Ted Leonsis, Bill Gorog, Russ Ramsey, Mark Warner, Al Berkeley, Jonathan Silver, Raj Singh, Marc Andressen, John Sidgmore, Alan Spoon.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Fascinating...not necessarily insightful
Having been part of the high-tech community in the NoVA, I rushed out to buy this book so I could get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the personalities and characters that unarguably drive the business and (to some extent) culture of this area. Overall, the book does deliver the insider perspective. It is successful at communicating the general feel of the 'era' - that bizarre blend of change-the-world optimism, unrealistic expectations, and at times mass-delusion. This is a chronicle of a particular time...not an insightful story about the personalities, or what drives them. The pacing and arrangement of the chapters was very disorienting...Ms Henry jumps between characters and anecdotes without good reason at times. In all, the book reads as a set of mostly independent vignettes, rather than a compelling story.
(Incidentally, at the same time, I was reading Codename Ginger by Steve Kemper, which I highly recommend, which was technically a better written book...but other comparisions are unfair) In any case, this still makes for fascinating reading, even if it's sometimes in a superficial voyeuristic sense.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Nothing we haven't seen before.
I found this book limited; the author was handed opportunity for deep insight in an increasingly relevant topic and missed the opportunity entirely. Not nearly the insight of Barbarians at the Gate or other classics that have been written since. Most painful is probably the editing; she re-tells anecdotes several times, which grew tiring.
|
