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Business Management Book Store > Business Management books beginning with O
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Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 |
Author: Sarah Lacy
Published: 2008-05-15 |
List price: $26.00
Our price: $17.16
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As of: January 07th, 2009 10:34:58 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Naive
The "thoughts" and "insights" here are about as passè as Crystal Clear Pepsi while bringing a perspective as fresh a jug of milk that has sat out in the SoCal sun for a week or so.
This book also represents several hours of my life that I won't get back.
Read a book penned by a grownup ;)
 nauseating in parts, informative in others
This is a quick and informative read for anyone interested in the new Valley/tech boom. Unfortunately, Sarah comes off as having drunk too much Web 2.0 kool-aid and spends a little too much time gushing about Facebook, which, if she and Zuckerberg are right, will become for the Web what AOL was ten years ago: a walled garden. Also, in the current economic climate, it might sound a little bullish, especially on companies like Slide who seem to have no future. Finally, for a book that only the digerati and other tech-savvy folks will read, it explains some of the new technologies using oversimplified and inapt metaphors.
 A great book about tech entrepreneurs
This is the third book I read about tech entrepreneurs. In fact it is the fourth if I include Inside Steve's Brain (but this one is about a single entrepreneur). The two previous ones were interviews of many, i.e. Betting it all and Founders at Work. The beauty (and at same time weakness) of Once you're lucky, Twice you're good is that is is about web2.0. Is this new step in the Internet development a speculative bubble or a speculative revolution. It is probably too early to say even if author Tracy Lacy (appearing in another post) is quite convinced it is a revolution.
It is a beautiful book because it shows once again the richness of individual connections. I have my own illustration of it in a blog, [...]. Paypal and its founders appear to be at the center of this network. Fairchild had such a similar situation at the beginning of Silicon Valley in the sixties, Apple, Sun, Cisco thereafter.
Another interesting element is about investors. There has been a popular idea that web2.0 was not funded by venture capitalists anymore because the web2.0 business angels who were web1.0 entrepreneurs had learnt their lesson. The situation is more complex as the web2.0 financing shows. Greylock, CRV, Accel but also Benchmark and Sequoia are vey active. Finally, it shows again and again what entrepreneurs are, i.e. passionate, driven individuals and I can only advise reading the epilogue about Levchin's childhood. Quite fascinating...
 Great read for tech lovers
I'm emotionally tied to the dot.com bust of a few years back since I work in high-tech and lost my job at a start-up company during the downturn. I saw Sarah Lacy being interviewed about Web 2.0 (the social networking groundswell) and of course she mentioned her book. I ordered it the next day based on a piqued interest in the magnitude and details of the social networking revolution.
I enjoyed the book for several reasons...
1) It's a great source of info on the movers and shakers of Web 2.0. Details of the most widely-used social networking sites and tools are described, along with why they've become popular.
2) The book is also gives great insight into Silicon Valley business patterns and the way a company goes from a good idea through getting financing in various ways to creating millionaires.
3) The book is based on personal interviews with Valley multi-millionaires and presumably-millionaires-to-be. The book acquaints the reader with the emotions resulting from the post-2000 bust where jobs and fortunes were lost. A driving theme throughout is how many of the current revolutionaries fought through their personal tragedies and were slowly able to believe again, nurture a dream and sustain another long upward struggle. I think this would be engrossing even for a non-techie.
Just horribly written
The anecdotes in this book are really great, but pretty much everything else is just plain awful. The writing, thesis and "evidence" are all horrible.
I won't even go into the second two, but check out this gem from page 4: "Another contender was Six Apart, founded in 2002 by then twenty-four-year-olds Ben and Mena Trott in 2004." Or this one from page 208 "Peter's two protoges were going to become closer allies or rivals". Allies? Rivals? Maybe both! Include Lacy's obnoxious habits of name dropping people and super exclusive parties she attended, referring to Mark Zuckerburg constantly as "Zuck" and finishing paragraphs with sentence fragments and you end up with a really painful book to read.
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