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eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work Paperback – May 29, 2001
For two roller-coaster years, Stross had total access not only to Benchmark's executives but to the companies they financed. He was a fly on the wall as fortunes were made in an instant, snap decisions got locked in, and new ventures took off--and sometimes crashed. Here are the testosterone-pumped conversations, round-the-clock meetings, and gutsy deals that launched the eBoys and their clients into the stratosphere of mega-wealth. Written like a novel but absolutely true, eBOYS brings to vivid life the glory days of the greatest business adventure of our time.
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Print length352 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherBallantine Books
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Publication dateMay 29, 2001
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Dimensions5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
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ISBN-100345428897
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ISBN-13978-0345428899
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Editorial Reviews
Review
--The Washington Post Book World
"A RING-SIDE SEAT AT A SINGULAR MOMENT IN BUSINESS HISTORY."
--The Wall Street Journal
From the Inside Flap
For two roller-coaster years, Stross had total access not only to Benchmark's executives but to the companies they financed. He was a fly on the wall as fortunes were made in an instant, snap decisions got locked in, and new ventures took off--and sometimes crashed. Here are the testosterone-pumped conversations, round-the-clock meetings, and gutsy deals that launched the eBoys and their clients into the stratosphere of mega-wealth. Written like a novel but absolutely true, eBOYS brings to vivid life the glory days of the greatest business adventure of our time.
From the Back Cover
--The Washington Post Book World
"A RING-SIDE SEAT AT A SINGULAR MOMENT IN BUSINESS HISTORY."
--The Wall Street Journal
About the Author
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The guy. No special emphasis on either the or guy, but no intervening pause, either. TheGuy.
That's the person needed to head a start-up once it has grown beyond a seed. To wit, a stud, ideally, a big honkin' stud or a total fuckin' stud. He (or, yes, she) will not lack for balls, at least in one sense, but in another will work his nuts off, or his ass off (these being valuable pieces of anatomical real estate; you never hear "works his index finger off"). A high-hustle guy. A total can-do guy. A winner. Smart. Someone with integrity-off-the-charts. Scrappy. A kick-ass dude, a nail-eatin', nut-crushin' (that trope again!) decision maker, a competitor with killer instincts. Someone who attracts and hires A's, unafraid to hire above himself. A player. A hitter.
Finding TheGuy--finding the Right Answer--for companies in need was Dave Beirne's world for ten years.
Thanks to happenstance, Beirne's career as a search guy had begun at the age of twenty-two in cold-call hell. Freshly graduated in 1985 from a small school, Bryant College, with a business degree, he had an appetite for work. During his last two years of college, he had taken a full course load, worked at IBM virtually full-time as a marketing assistant, captained the lacrosse team, and led buddies in sundry intramural sports--and in what in the 1980s was defined as the back half of work-hard/play-hard (the lock-and-load party, for example: the dorm door was locked, and a concoction of liquor and Kool-Aid that filled a giant garbage can in the room's center was drunk until every person was loaded).
He had his coterie of mates, to whom he was fiercely loyal. But outside that circle, he was not a gregarious person. In fact, he was unable to mix without putting many on the defensive. He walked with a chip on his shoulder that he took no pains to disguise. He had a particular aversion to anyone whose status derived from inherited privilege. A college friend would later liken his attitude to that of a ghetto-hardened tough: If it was given to ya, don't think you're better than me.
His own family had prospered from blue-collar roots, working for General Motors. His grandfather was a union leader who worked forty-two years on the assembly line at the Tarrytown, New York, plant, and his father, Gus, had followed, directly out of high school, hanging doors on the line. While Dave Beirne was growing up, his father worked the swing shift. But eventually, Gus was able to make the jump to line management, and when Dave was in high school his father moved into the upper reaches and eventually would oversee fifty thousand people at his career's peak before retiring. The ascendance of this high school graduate happened too late for his son Dave to think as ambitiously as he might have about where to take strong grades when applying to college, and too late for Dave to change his own sense of class status. At Bryant he all but shouted: Don't think anything was handed to my dad or to me.
Graduating from a small school without the national reputation of an Ivy, he was at a disadvantage for entree to the most promising career tracks in business. Resolved to gather the experience and money he would need in order to obtain a Harvard MBA, the instrument that would give him parity, he spoke with anyone he could think of about entry-level positions. He was introduced to Chuck Ramsey, an executive recruiter at Sales Consultants who worked with technology companies; Ramsey was willing to overlook the fact thatthe kid did not even know what a recruiter did and give him a try.
Hiring Dave Beirne was not an especially expensive risk; the only pay
was the commission earned when a candidate was successfully placed, and it was up to the "account executive," as Beirne was grandly titled, to obtain the recruiting assignment from an employer willing to pay a contingency fee when hiring a recommended candidate. Beirne was given a phone, a desk, Yellow Pages, and training that consisted of a simple injunction: Have at it.
It was not clear why either a prospective client or candidate would take Dave Beirne seriously. He was young, and looked even younger than he was; his job experience at that point--summer work on the assembly line and the IBM assistantship as essentially a gofer--had not provided a tour of the upper floors of power. He had no list of successful placements. Why would anyone look at him and sign on?
The answer: No one did look at him. The business of placing low-and midlevel sales people was conducted entirely on the phone. What prospective employers and employees heard was a baritone that conferred the authority of someone twice his age. He was a quick study, put in more hours than anyone else, talked his way into assignments, and found recruits.
Because debt was anathema to him, he had started with the in-tention of first saving up enough to pay for business school, and only then applying. But commissions rolled in, almost instantly. (After only six weeks on the job, the kid had suggested to Ramsey, twenty-one years his senior, that the two should leave their employer and start their own firm; Ramsey demurred.) Beirne did sensationally, and the savings were in place in months, not years. He had simply leaped over the stepping-stone of business school to the other shore.
Product details
- Publisher : Ballantine Books (May 29, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345428897
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345428899
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #255,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #135 in Venture Capital (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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I think it is worth reading when you are an insider but not necessarily as an outsider.
The book is written in strong and very engaging narrative, I spent a few days of my vacation at a sunny resort...under a shade umbrella reading this book (the water slide had to wait !). The eBay story alone was facinating, as was the previous histories of each of the founders...and there was more ! I recommend this book to anyone who understands the silicon valley "environment", also to those having a sincere wish to do so.
Benchmark annually sifts through the 1000s of business plans to fund a handful of dot.com startups to IPO, as described in the entertaining well-referenced chapters covering billion-dollar startups like eBay and Webvan, as well as others like: Tristata, Toys-R-Us, Red Hat, Scient, Priceline, ePhysician, newwatch.com, art.com etc...
Possible improvements include: portrayal of global context; more statistical evidence/facts about VCs/startups/etc..; significant objective analysis & reflection of events; and formatting to include summaries/lists etc.. (like `Confessions of a Venture Capitalist' by Quindlen). These would help the reader use the information rather than just be entertained by the storyline.
Overall an intelligently, well-written, `fly-on-the-wall' tale gamely capturing much of the passion, technology and business acumen/judgment exhibited by a likeable & lucky, hard-working company with integrity. More entertaining than useful to most business readers- hence the only average rating.
Top reviews from other countries
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2020