Rating: 
Summary: Excellent read!
Review: This is an excellent read. Kuo masterfully depicts the rise and fall of the dot.com Gold Rush. I'm just thankful I experienced it by reading it - not by living it like he did. This book is very well written. I would rec. it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent first-person lesson of Value America
Review: A wonderful book, written with humor and sadness. Humor stems from the author's style and the now-apparent, foolish ambition of Craig Winn and his Value America colleagues. Winn wasn't alone, and maybe 'ambition' is too kind. "Arrogance" might be a better term, shared by a lot of egomaniacs posing as entrepreneurs, launching dot.coms in the late 1990s. Sadness, because it would have been such a nice story if the tulip mania bubble didn't burst, and all of us were today equally drunk with wealth from these new economy firms.Strangely, some of this reads like ancient history. Value America came and went so fast, determined to be the marketplace for the new millenium, the web site for everybody, satisfying shoppers' seven 'needs', doing four important functions perfectly, and never holding any inventory. First hints of the real mess they did have in inventory postponed their original IPO in 1998, only to see Value America rush right back into the IPO market in April 1999, with visions of billions of dollars in stock value at a time when $30 million in quarterly sales (along with millions more in losses) constituted their entire revenue stream. And most of that business was over the phone! Winn comes across as a man easily impressed by himself. Within months of initial signs of success, he has his gubernatorial campaign laid out and his plans to be president by 2008 are going full steam ahead. From brief conversations with Henry Kissinger and Bill Bennett, Winn thinks he has a campaign advisory team. And all the time Winn ignores the fact that his business model is not working, his basic assumptions are incorrect, and his disbelief as to his naysayers is misplaced. The concept was simple, elegant and very marketable to the venture capitalists convinced that they only had to be right one in twenty times and they'd still come out rich. Only the seductive pitch lacked details, specifics, and good-old-fashioned business sense. Welcome to "due diligence". A must read for those who are all-too-quickly forgetting the hard e-commerce lessons learned from 1998 to 2000.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read this year!
Review: Dot Bomb chronicles the rise and fall of Value America, an internet retailer that went public in April 1999. The book starts in the middle: Kuo joined the company as an employee a month after its IPO, so his summary of pre-IPO events is quite condensed and incomplete (if my dot-com experiences are any guide, the pre-IPO times may have been more chaotic). Clearly, much of Kuo's reporting about the first and last days of Value America comes from interviews with fellow Value America employees and investors, and I suspect the book lacks some perspective due to the apparent exclusion of input from anyone technical. The book is extremely readable, perhaps the best-written non-fiction book I've read this year. Of course, I am biased: I have worked as a consultant for several dot-com startups over the past few years, and much of what I read sounded extremely familiar. I shook my head with understanding, and felt like a fellow insider, as I read about the absurd pressures that came from the artificial "internet economics" in which the experts claimed that capturing "revenue" or "customers" was more important than even a remote prospect of profitable operations. Kuo's book isn't just fascinating because of what it says about the dot-com craze and the irrational market forces that fueled irrational and schizophrenic actions by companies. It's also a fascinating tale of a charismatic company founder whose greatest strengths are also his greatest weaknesses. It's an insightful tale of human relationships in which people can't tell ugly truths to their friends. As I mentioned, Kuo is an excellent writer (or else has help from excellent editors). I read the entire book in a single afternoon and evening. Anyone who has experienced the "dot-com" and "dot-bomb" business world should enjoy this book. Those who mocked the rise and fall of the dot-com culture will find the book quite validating. Even dot-com millionaires will likely still enjoy reading the book.
And in the end, anyone who plans to start a business -- on the internet or on Main Street -- should read this book; at the end of each page, ask yourself, "is this me?"
Rating: 
Summary: Pure Fiction
Review: Being the first employee at Value America, I feel I am too biased to comment on whether or not the book has entertainment value. However, I feel it is important that the reader know that Kuo was simply a brief visitor at Value America, and his role there was far less significant than one would assume or expect from someone with his title.
His recap of the events before his arrival at Value America are all inaccurate, which is understandable. Ironically, however, the most misleading portions of his story are when he tries to piece together the events that occurred when he was actually there. Unfortunately, this is where his limited involvement with the goings-on at the company have provided him with only enough data points to be dangerous. He fills his numerous knowledge gaps with presumptions and prejudiced recountings from other superfluous employees like himself, or has simply made up the kinds of dot-com stories he knows the readers expect and want to hear. I'm sure Kuo has not intentionally tried to mislead or misrepresent, but simply put, he does not have the business sense, industry knowledge, nor the first-hand experience that one needs to tell the stort of the rise and fall of a dot-com.
Rating:
Summary: One of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR!
Review: I recommend "Dot Bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath" without reservation. What makes this book so special is that the reader fits snugly into the storyteller's perspective. For the same reason that I respond to Michael Lewis' books, the author manages to be the only person in the room with an ounce of common sense as people and events spin wildly out of control and challenge assumptions of the way the business world is supposed to work. The entire story is told with refreshingly blunt honesty and self effacement and every moment in it is absolutely laugh out loud hilarious. Kuo's description of the company's founder, CEO and Chairman Craig Wynn is next level fantastic. I was simultaneously annoyed and admiring of Wynn (very much like my feelings for Hollywood actors). I admired how he followed his visions, dreams and ambition, but was also annoyed that he got so rich doing it since his ideas ended up being so hollow and unsound. (This book also reminded me of the movie "Being There" with Peter Sellers). It is a much a book about human behavior as it is about business. It is a wild ride that was told with such humor that I was sorry it had to end. You will love every minute of it. A great story.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific read
Review: Although it seems the Internet craze is a world away, this is a terrific page-turner, and great story to escape into. It does give great business insight and background, very cool behind the scenes workings of the Internet (for all those of us who weren't inside, but just played the stock market). It's extremely well written, fast-paced, funny, with great characters that leave you eager to see what crazy things they'll do next!!! Given the market today, and stock/economy decisions we still face, there's enough education in here to make it a must read. enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I think some of the criticisms of Mr. Kuo are too harsh. Like others, I noticed that in this book Kuo alternates between praising Craig Winn and describing the horrible actions of Craig Winn. I took that as a sign that Kuo personnaly felt ambivalent. That doesn't make it a bad book. Ambivalence is a normal condition. Glossing it over to create some kind of artifice of consistency would have truly made this a bad book.
One thing I got out of this book, besides that I enjoyed reading it, was some insight into human nature. It's a book that can tell you something about the way people act and the strange drives that they have. It shows how sometimes people with terrible psychological problems and huge blind spots are the most rich and powerful.
Rating: 
Summary: where's the panache?
Review: Commendable read of the Internet debacle from a self-proclaimed insider. The problem of Value America was the same of most dot.coms during its epoch--it should have never have gone public when it was still suffering from such a disastrous business plan, mammoth burn rate, and megalomaniacal CEO/founder. Great basis for a story; unfortunately, Kuo lacks the aplomb to carry the book towards the pantheon of great business books.
Rating:
Summary: Fall of a dot.com
Review: Though much has been written about dot.com successes (Google, EBay, Amazon), few books have been devoted to the failures which I believe provide the more interesting stories.
I'm glad this book came along to provide us an inside look of a dot.com company(Value America) from its inception, near death, rebirth and inevitable demise from overblown expectations, mismanagement and intrigue which could very well be the stories of dot.coms past.
If you want to know why corporate graveyards are littered with dot.bombs then this is the book to read.
Rating: 
Summary: No suspense
Review: The problem with this book is that it didn't climax. The company didn't spectacularly go up in flames. Instead, Kuo lays out its problems page by page. It never builds toward anything, instead plodding to the company's demise. There wasn't a single anecdote that was worthy of retelling, which is a rarity for me among non-fiction books. I'm always recounting something fascinating or interesting or funny that happened to the main character. There just didn't seem to be any of that here.
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