Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and Realistic Tale
Review: As someone who worked for a smaller .com that also died a quick death, I can attest to how realistically Kuo captures the essence of the .com era. This book is about as realistic as it gets, the analysis of the internal and political problems start-up companies face is dead on. Steve Winn is a classic example of the salesman CEO, one who will say anything to close a sale. This book is a fantastic case study for anyone interested in understand the excesses of the .com era. The excessive spending, the focus of revenue, and the approval of garbage business plans. This book is also a testament to how far one can get with A+ salesmanship.After reading this book, I decided to look up Steve Winn and see what he is up to these days. The book mentions the fact that Winn seemed to find religion shortly before he was ousted, now he is pushing books on terrorism denouncing Islam trying to cash in on 9-11. If you read this book, do an Amazon and Google search on Steve Winn, hilarity will ensue. Even his bio on the 700 club page has the typical Winn exaggerations. For more laughs, be sure to check out Winn's book about how his company was ruined by everyone else but him.
Rating:
Summary: Dot.bomb
Review: Dob.bomb is an absolutely fascinating look behind the scenes of an internet bust. With incredible humor, author David Kuo tells a tale of how an egomaniacal founder, with a penchant for ultimate control, can kill even the best venture. I, too, worked for a "dot.com" company, and for an entrepreneur with qualities very similar to Mr. Winn's (do they just clone these guys??) As I read the book, I just replaced Mr. Winn's name with our CEO's and it told basically the same story. The parallels were incredible. They can't relinquish control because no one understands their baby like they do. They refuse to accept the advice of the very people they hire to take the company to the next level. And in the end, the most amazing thing is the disconnect that these ego driven visionaries have -- they absolutely cannot see how their actions had any effect on the company's failure. As the cops say, "yeah, I know, the other dude did it". This book was such a fun read that I'm now reading it for a second time and recommending it to all my friends who work in hi tech environments. It is a funny but cautionary tale of what NOT to do. I lived through the same kind of nightmare of optimism-lunacy-panic-chaos-crash that David Kuo describes and he tells it like it is. The book is an absolute hoot, to boot. Buy it. Enjoy it. Learn from it.
Rating:
Summary: Even if only 50% true, it's worth the money.
Review: Even if some of the people and events are not 100% accurate (and how can they ever be with personal perception), this is a great read and a lesson that every business builder needs to read and re-read along their own delevlopment pathway. There should be more of these books that tell about the day to day stupidity that all too often is sold as high value structured thinking. For a start, read this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Compelling story
Review: As someone who went through a dot bomb, it's amazing to read a story with so many simularities: the wanton spending of cash, the arrogence and egos, and the stunning miss reading of the markets. It all adds up for a facinating story, and the author tells it well. I take off one star because I think the author only told half the story: up the the departure of the founder. From this point, the company was onto its decline. However, there's still another facinating story remaining in the long months left as what remained of the company surely struggled against its foregone fate.
Rating:
Summary: Suprisingly good read....
Review: After reading Dot.con, I really wanted something to accompany the book that went into only minor specifics on this time period that will go down in history as one of this most disgusting in the history of America. Kuo does a really nice job with this book. I was very suprised at his ability to keep my interest and all that good stuff..I confess I picked this book up, thinking that it would be poorly written and all that junk, but quite the contrary.
Read this book you crazy kids! youll enjoy it!
Rating:
Summary: Dot.Bomb explodes blinding Dot-com greed
Review: I'm not sure the subtitle is quite accurate; Value America an Internet Goliath? Value America never was a household name. When I told friends I was reading this, not one of them had heard of Value America. Its demise never triggered economic panic or prompted congressional inquiries. It was just another dotcom that bit the dust, taking millions of dollars and a few hundred jobs with it. With that criticism out of the way, let me tell you why I enjoyed this audiobook. It may be hard to believe that so many willing people investing their lives and their fortunes in this company. While founder Craig Winn blustered on about an inventoryless retail revolution, nobody read the fine print. Nobody stopped to consider how unworkable his plan was. Scary! Winn's plan was that VA would market its partners' brands, which supposedly numbered in the thousands (hilariously, the actual number of brands fell far short of 1000, until one enterprising manager decided a yellow highlighter was a completely different *brand* from a pink one, and that a size small jacket was different from a size medium. None of the snookered investors or auditors double-checked the claims). VA would not need warehouses to stock these many brands. Instead, they would electronically pass the orders to the manufacturers, who would then fill them, leaving VA to lead the "inventoryless" retail revolution. Viva Value America! Not so fast. Sales for highly promoted brands, like IBM computers, were robust, but VA wasn't promoting the other brands with the same vigor. So when an order for one of those yellow highlighters trickled in, the manufacturer, accustomed to filling orders by the truckload, was not equipped to fill it. And there was no easy way for VA to track what they had or hadn't filled. VA had no way to combine items from various suppliers, either, to reduce shipping charges. And people were returning their merchandise to VA's offices, not the manufacturer.
As defective merchandise cluttered hallways and angry customers flooded the phone lines, each executive tried to pull the company in his or her own new direction. Craig Winn, however, only sees his own direction--until it's too late. It seems unthinkable that so many smart businesspeople didn't foresee VA's many obstacles. People bought into Craig Winn's vision, partly because he was a compelling speaker, and partly because he was never afraid to lie. Author David Kuo tells the story with the wide-eyed passion of a just-hired senior VP of communications, practically spinning in his new seat at the corporate table. He looks up to Winn; you can hear the fervor in his voice (he reads the audiobook himself). Later, as Winn betrays his confidence and Kuo catches him in more than a few lies, you feel his rage, yet it's still mixed with a need to believe and to forgive. Kuo isn't stupid, as someone with the benefit of hindsight might suspect--but he is greedy and he is gullible. Anyone who lived through the web's boom days will empathize. He certainly isn't the only one taken in by a grandiose idea.
Compared to the more recent Anatomy of Greed, Dot.Bomb was more enlightening and entertaining in its documenting of corporate failure--and, with regular access to the CEO, author David Kuo was more of an insider. Dot.Bomb is no nuclear explosion, but it is smart, it's funny, and it's well-written, and I enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent thriller, but lacks some details
Review: This is a fun book - I enjoyed it tremendously. However, the crucial part of story - when Value America collapses - is omitted since the author was not working for the company anymore. This is precisely what I was looking for: details of its collapse. Otherwise, this is a wery well written thriller.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, although sad story
Review: It's amazing how someone could recount the events as accurately as the author does, long after they have happened. Obviously he spoke to a lot of people he talks about in the book to get their frame of mind and perspective on the reasons why they said and did the things he writes about. Definately has an unbiased and fair look at the dizzying-fast-paced world around him and I give him great credit for that. This book I found to be educational on a business level and a psychological level. Defaintely a good read and highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but somewhat one sided view
Review: The author tells it's experience as a VP of Value America. Infortunatelly, it fails to adress all the issues that ultimately lead to the failure of that company and instead debates excessivly the virtues and defects of both the company's chairman and it's President.
I believe the author is also a little too critic of it's colleagues and fails to approach both sides on most of the problems.
Nevertheless, is a enjoyable story to read, and a good opportunity to see why some many dot.coms failed.
Rating:
Summary: Flashbacks to those crazy days
Review: I picked up this book wondering if my short brush with Craig Winn had been all a bad a dream. I was one of the many people that came into contact with Craig during the Fall of 99. I had specifically worked on the FedEx / Value America deal on the FedEx side. I wondered how David Kuo would write about the FedEx deal, if at all. After reading the book in about 1 day, and living through the nightmare again and again (with my Wife listening to me ramble on and on), I must say that David does an AWESOME job at portraying the time and "age" (it was only 2 years ago, but it seems like a lifetime). Congratulations to David for a well balanced book. More importanlty, congratulations for a well writen book that I, for one, could not put down.
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