Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet

Michael Wolff’s wickedly funny chronicle of his rags-to-riches-to-rags adventure as a fledgling Internet entrepreneur exposes an industry powered by hype, celebrity, and billions of investment dollars — and notably devoid of profit-making enterprises. As he describes his efforts to control his company’s burn rate — the amount of money the company consumes in excess of its income — Wolff offers a no-holds-barred portrait of unaccountable successes and major disasters, including the story behind Wired magazine and its fanatical founder, Louis Rossetto; the rise of America Online, perhaps the most dysfunctional successful company in history, and the humiliating inability of people such as Bill Gates to untangle the intricacies of the Web.