eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work
I talked to one of the guys at Salomon Smith Barney and asked if he thought us doing an offering would be OK even though it had only been three weeks since 9/11. I also told him why I thought this was a good time to grow. He told me no one was doing offerings at this time. Wall Street had pretty much shut down since 9/11, and although there were pe
... See moreWillis Johnson • Junk to Gold: From Salvage to the World’S Largest Online Auto Auction
The first? Selling things online. Bezos was a trader with some exposure to internet companies, but this wasn't a years-long journey of discovery and understanding. This was a dude who read a stat on some random website, and thought "there's something here." Early on, most of that skepticism came from an inability for a startup to compete with large... See more
Kyle Harrison • Markets, Markets, and Markets
The thing that was really most important, as a startup—though by then we weren't really a startup—by then we were public, but a young company—is the relationship that we had built with our customers. We wanted them to feel that a) they were given a decent deal and that b) they trusted us to lead them to where they needed to go. So
Jessica Livingston • Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Sometimes I wasn’t sure what motivated John. It certainly wasn’t money. To most investors, the prospect of a quick sellout to IBM would be irresistible. But for John, investing in high technology was a calling, and monetary reward was the byproduct of a successful mission. The higher goal was to create something enduring, a growing enterprise that
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