Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure

“In finance, you always have to have an alternative,” Byers said. “Otherwise, you’re sure to be eaten alive.” “Even with a blue-chip company like AT&T?” “With any large company. That’s why I recommend that you look into a Reg D with a retail investment bank.” “What’s a Reg D?” “Regulation D allows you to sell stock to individual investors of hi

our company, everyone is responsible for understanding our goals and how their work contributes to it.

Although it seemed impossible, the pace of activity at GO continued to increase. There were so many urgent matters demanding my attention that I took to staying at a nearby hotel, to save the few critical minutes spent commuting from the city. There was no such thing as a weekend off.

Once your city is established, owning the API is like being the king of the city. The king gets to make the rules: collecting tolls for entering the city, setting the taxes that the programmers and users have to pay, and taking first dibs on any prime locations (by keeping some APIs confidential for personal use). This is the great secret of the co

and work by.

Almost like clockwork, every ten years since the beginning of the computer revolution, a new class of computers had unexpectedly emerged.

“That’s a post-money valuation of one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy-five million, depending on how much we raise.” I was worried that this price was unrealistic, and that the offering might not fly when it hit the street. “I just can’t see how our business plan supports that valuation,” I said. “It’s enough to make a sane investor toss his c

Well over a billion dollars had gone into developing this operating system, an investment that continues today with no realistic possibility of a return. The technique works well as long as enough money pours in to buoy up moribund projects. But by mid-1989, IBM was so laden with the walking dead that its highly profitable mainframe monopoly could

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