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eBoys
- The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work
- Narrated by: Eric Conger
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
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Publisher's summary
Randall Stross, author of acclaimed books on Microsoft and Steve Jobs, blends a business historian's perspective with a journalist's flair for suspenseful storytelling to look at wealth creation up close. For two years, Stross gained unprecedented access to the venture capitalists at Benchmark, an upstart firm founded by thirtysomething renegades whose average height happens to be 6'5. Since Benchmark's founding in 1995, each partner's net worth has increased, on average, $100 million annually.
Stross was present as the Benchmark boys debated which businesses to support, and by recounting their conversations in testosterone-rich detail, he offers listeners the most precise and enlightening account of the ways in which venture capitalists think, evaluate prospects, and wield influence.
The author also gained access to a number of the Benchmark-backed start-ups, including a small, privately held San Jose company called eBay. The value of the company grew from $20 million to more than $21 billion within two years of Benchmark's investment, an increase of 100,000 percent. Business Week called it "probably the best venture capital investment of all time."
(P)2000 Random House, Inc.
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Story
When Mark Rampolla filled a notebook with potential start-up ideas, his wife asked him some tough questions. What about this idea is exciting, beyond the possibility of a profit? How will it fit into a life that makes you and your family happy? How will it change the world? Eventually Mark found his great idea: coconut water. He had seen the developing world use coconut water, but this valuable resource was being discarded in the US. While taking on the beverage industry was a big goal - high-hanging fruit - it was worth the risk.
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10 Chapter Infomercial
- By KIM WILLIAMSON on 02-16-20
By: Mark Rampolla
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American Icon
- Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company
- By: Bryce G. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dysfunctional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses.
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The best business book I ever read
- By Michael on 10-07-12
By: Bryce G. Hoffman
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Frenemies
- The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
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Good for the Money
- My Fight to Pay Back America
- By: Bob Benmosche
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, AIG - the American insurance behemoth - was sinking fast. It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability.
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Worthwhile, informative, and just short of inspiring
- By Preston on 11-17-21
By: Bob Benmosche
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Small Giants
- Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, 10th Anniversary Edition
- By: Bo Burlingham
- Narrated by: Bo Burlingham, Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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It's an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside 14 such remarkable companies.
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fantastic book for small company builders
- By Amazon Customer on 08-01-17
By: Bo Burlingham
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Street Smarts
- An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs
- By: Norm Brodsky, Bo Burlingham
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.
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This great audio was originally called The Knack!
- By morton on 12-16-11
By: Norm Brodsky, and others
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Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain
- How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur
- By: Ryan Blair, Don Yaeger
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Ryan Blair knows about building a business from the ground up. Like many entrepreneurs he had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and, above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset.Blair's middle-class childhood came to an abrupt end when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a bad neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive. Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing.
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I wouldn't read it again
- By Blahhhhhh on 01-07-13
By: Ryan Blair, and others
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The Reinventors
- How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change
- By: Jason Jennings
- Narrated by: Jason Jennings
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Eventually every job and every business will become irrelevant. According to Jason Jennings, the past few decades have seen unprecedented shifts: former third-world nations have transformed themselves into high-tech manufacturing powerhouses; technology has democratized business and increased competition in ways never before seen; and customers, used to getting exactly what they want when they want it, are no longer beholden to the corporate giants.
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Good advice
- By Myers on 07-28-18
By: Jason Jennings
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No Better Time
- The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet
- By: Molly Knight Raskin
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.
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An Overlooked Hero of 9-11
- By Jean on 05-27-16
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All the Rave
- The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster
- By: Joseph Menn
- Narrated by: John Rubinstein
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive inside account of the file-sharing revolution that overthrew the music industry, All the Rave reveals the family betrayal, greed, and mismanagement that hijacked one the most fundamental innovations of the Internet era. Named one of the three best books of 2003 by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., All the Rave has been out of print until now and unavailable in most formats. Author and veteran technology journalist Joseph Menn also wrote 2010's Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet.
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The Far-reaching Karma of Napster
- By Susie on 04-29-13
By: Joseph Menn
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Losing the Signal
- The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry
- By: Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.
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Fascinating
- By Gerardo A Dada on 09-05-15
By: Jacquie McNish, and others
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Reality Check
- Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
- By: Guy Kawasaki
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion" is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense"...then it's time for a reality check.
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The Reality of Reality Check
- By Ben on 08-18-09
By: Guy Kawasaki
What listeners say about eBoys
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Jet Kohli
- 09-05-07
A little pompous
.. at times.. a little light on what it takes to run a start-up.. but it makes a good short listen about the go-go days of the internet.
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Overall
- Andrew
- 01-25-05
THE book on inside venture capital investing
I tend to only review books that I either absolutely love or absolutely hate... this book falls into the former category. I read the actual book a couple months ago and found that it was so good I didn't want to put it down -- I as actually sad when I finished. I was ecstatic to see that Audible added it as an audiobook... I just finished listening to it and again find myself awestruck by this book.
Eboys is about Benchmark Capital of Menlo Park, California -- arguably the #1 venture capital firm in the world. It chronicles the day to day dealings of the partners, their interactions with entrepreneurs from all walks of life, and the multi-billion dollar companies they've funded... the most prominent of which is eBay, a company that made all of the founding partners 300 million dollars each.
This is an awesome book for a budding entrepreneur -- it really gives you an inside fly-on-the-wall look at how the mysterious and sometimes daunting world of high stakes venture capital works. But it's not just a how-to guide in obtaining venture capital, as the real life stories of the Eboys are fascinating, entertaining, and incredibly inspiring.
Don't think about it -- GET THIS BOOK!
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Wayzon
- 01-23-08
Could have been a lot better
I aspired to be a venture capitalist before I heard this book. It is interesting to get a fly-on-the-wall perspective of how VC's make multimillion dollar decisions like most people debate what to get on their pizza. It's filled with tons of profanity quoting Dave Burns which I find unnecessary. I wasn't impressed with any of the characters and as an entrepreneur, it makes me want to avoid VC funding at all costs.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Marcus Vorwaller
- 10-02-05
Great story!
I really enjoyed this book. I thought it might seem outdated since it was set and written during and only very shortly afer the internet bubble of the 90's, but I was pleasantly surprised. The story of each of the companies the eBoys invested in was interesting and the way the author puts you directly in the conversation is great. The only disappointment for me was an excessive fidelity to reproducing their use of profanity. There were probably 30 or 40 uses of the "f-word" throughout the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Sean
- 12-01-03
Entertaining but misinformed
I found the book to be totally engrossing and entertaining, but also amusing (not always in a good way), a little inaccurate, and probably more than a little embarrassing to the participants in hindsight. If you are looking for an entertaining read about the highest fliers in the internet bubble, this is a great choice. But if you are hoping to learn more about venture capital from an insiders point of view, this book will lead you astray.
The description of the attitudes and lingo at Benchmark and other venture firms in the book seem out of place. The author seems to be describing the macho environment of an investment bank rather than the more subdued approach of venture capitalists. But maybe that's the way things actually were at Benchmark in the late 1990s.
As a venture capitalist myself, I was surprised by the apparent lack of due diligence and the thin premises upon which the partners seemed to make their investment decisions. I'm sure that my perception of this is in part a consequence of the author's choice to gloss over the nitty gritty details. But explicit dialogue between the partners shows that the partners did in fact have a shoot-from-the-hip style. I am hardly qualified to question the partners' instincts when they were so successful. But I do think it is a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the industry as a whole.
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18 people found this helpful
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Overall
- CharmedPen
- 01-17-06
Enjoyable Education on Early Days of E-Venturing
I enjoyed this book and found it to hold my interest as well as provide information. The reader, the writer and the topic were all superb!
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- eclectic reader
- 11-11-15
Insight into venture capitalism
Not as compelling as some recent tech histories it does give an insider's view into what goes on in venture capitalism
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Overall
- John A. Held
- 09-10-06
Interesting, entertaining
This is a great book about a unique time in history and a few high achievers who mostly came from blue-collar backgrounds who were in thick of it, making surprisingly seat-of-the-pants decisions.
What is interesting is many of the companies that made it through the bubble collapse are still around and even profitable, and have changed our lives. While most of us still go to the store to get grocieries, how we research purchases, buy books, music and many other items has changed.
It's worth adding that Eric Conger does a great job of narrating a very good book and bringing the entertaining dialog to life.
If this is at all an interesting subject to you, I recomend this book.
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- Nicolai Bak Jensen
- 05-30-18
On the verge of a bobble
It's crazy to hear about the deals of a market that was just about to pop. With speculations of the current markets stability (2018 May) the .com bobble seems slot crazier.
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- Starkad
- 06-24-24
Great insight into VC
Stross does a great job of surveying quite a few of Benchmark Capital’s investments into startups. It would be interesting to follow up with the performance of the companies after the dot-com bubble burst.
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