[.ca] The Leap: A Memoir of Love and Madness in the Internet ... (ISBN 0395839343)

From Amazon.com:
These days, if it isn't a dot-com venture, it's no adventure at all. But in early 1996, when Tom Ashbrook jumped from the world of ink and paper to that of computer screen and mouse, Internet start-ups were largely the domain of computer geeks and 18-year-old whiz kids--not exactly the most obvious place for a journalist with a family to support. But with big dreams and a midcareer itch, Ashbrook took The Leap. The result is a look back at those adrenalin-pumped years that's filled with honesty, humor, and a healthy dose of introspection. Neither a geek nor a whiz kid, Ashbrook was an award-winning writer for the The Boston Globe, where he had worked for 15 years. Shortly after winning a coveted one-year sabbatical in Harvard's Neiman Fellowship program, Ashbrook began talking Net dreams with an old college friend, Rolly Rouse. Their vision was to launch a Web site that would present home-design information and images and enable users to create online idea portfolios and buy quality products for their dream homes. Ashbrook soon quit his job and plunged into the project full time, endlessly revising business plans, tapping anyone and everyone for advice, courting venture capitalists, hoarding free credit cards for backup "security", and forever trying to convince a sane and worried wife that he wasn't zooming headlong over a cliff. As a case study of HomePortfolio.com, it's a story of manic speed and energy. As the story of one man's midlife adventure, it's a tale of trepidation, fear, ambition, love, and wonderment. Ashbrook writes with eloquence. His descriptions are imaginative, juicy, and always dead-on. For example, Harvard Business School "was a gleaming, vitamin-enriched, brick and marble and white-trimmed monument to economic steroids," and its old buildings "always looked next-to-new, like rich, pampered matrons on full-dose nip-and-tuck regimens of estrogen and plastic surgery." And he remembers the Myers-Briggs personality test "smelled a little like horoscopes for eggheads to me, with its big gumbo of letters and pat descriptions." Occasionally, Ashbrook's tendency to spice up his descriptions gets a bit much as he throws in too many metaphors; it's as if his brain is on hyperlink overdrive. Overall, though, his graceful prose flows with alacrity, and the pace is infectious. Forget the quiet comfort of your favorite reading chair; you'll be stomping down the sidelines, hoarsely shouting, "Yes, yes, you're almost there, go, one more push!" For that's what this is, a breathless tale of giving birth, an exhausting, exhilarating play-by-play of sweaty labor and life-changing success. Beware... it'll give you the itch. --S. Ketchum

Required reading for entreprenuers--and their families:
Tom Ashbrook has written the book that my partner and I have talked about--a hard look at the reality of living the entreprenuerial dream (or sometimes nightmare). "The Leap" portrays the emotional rollercoaster of a startup, from the exhilarating highs of the early wins to the long dark nights of the soul when there seems to be no way out of the box in which you've put yourself and your family. With his reporter's skills, Ashbrook tells the story with style, insight, and a narrative drive worthy of Raymond Chandler. The cast of characters is familiar to all who have fought these battles, although it appears that Ashbrook and Rouse managed to avoid the "bad guys" and charlatans most of us encounter along the way. Every entreprenuer knows the "wannabes" who jump in early but are unable to stay the course, the selfless contributors who provide critical feedback, contacts, industry knowledge, or just emotional support, and the dedicated employees who catch the dream early and stay committed to pursuing it whatever the cost. Most important, however, the author vividly portrays the burdens placed on friends and family. I came away from this with a much stronger appreciation for, and insight into, the toll that the last seven years have taken on my wife and sons. I look forward to a sequel chronicling this never-ending story. This book should be required reading for anyone considering "the leap", and for their spouse as well.

Personalizing Business Makes Good Reading:
Excellent account of leaping from job security to job risk for the rewards of founding and growing your own company. This is not a "how-to do it" book. It is more of a "what I faced book" with helpful pointers along the way-- the book does shows the steps in general terms of what an entrepreneur with a vision must do to succeed. Passion is a driving force and Mr. Ashbrook's account showed that he and his co-founder had it. The book is a touching and interesting read, with informative business points interlaced in it.

OK, but not as good as Burn Rate:
If you are going to read one book on internet startups read "Burn Rate". This book was interesting in its own way - focusing more on the impact to one's family of doing an internet startup. But I found that story fairly predictable - of course you have to work hard and miss many hours away from home. I found myself wishing the author would get past deciding to commit himself to the venture and tell us more about mechanics of starting the company.

Fun and Easy Read for An E-Commerce Blank Slate:
"The Leap" is a fun, accessible and page turning foray into the world of e-commerce wannabes, especially if you happen to be clueless but intrigued by the phenomena of web start-ups and the preternatural sums of money required for so many of them. A friend lent me this book unsolicited. More out of courtesy than curiosity, I thought I'd skim the first few pages and return it. Wrong! Until I read it, I didn't think I was particulary interested in e-commerce matters, especially yuppie-sounding ones. But I found instead that Tom Ashbrook's book resonates on multiple levels, so that someone like me who'se not likely to be interested in what goes into starting 'just one more cyber company' is in for a big suprise. "The Leap" is an edgy mixture of personalities, relationships, families, mid-life crises, risk taking, and lots more. It's a quick and suspenseful read. Given the fickle nature of these companies, there's no final ending. Since completing this book, I've found that I pick up on media stories about other similar ventures undertaken by people with little or no capital and have a more fully informed (albeit of a 'cyber start-up 101' nature) idea and appreciation for what's involved. While people like Tom and his partner, Rolly Rouse (the obsessed and original brains behind the entire Homeportfolio venture) may not be entirely like you and me (they are after all Yale educated and know lots of people with potential deep pockets) they and their families are enough like lots of us that their story is simultaneously exciting and frightening. Enjoy your leap into their leap!

Before You Decide to Leap....:
In an article which appeared in FSB magazine, Ashbrook explains "There is a game I call startup solitaire. It doesn't have a rule book. It just comes to you, late at night. It goes like this: You're alone in your bedroom with a tall stack of credit cards. You're slowly spreading them out on the bed, turning the cards over and over, checking them against your monthly statements, looking for a few more dollars to borrow." As he observes in the book, Ashbrook had dreams his life wasn't touching. He heard a clock ticking. He knew the world was changing in ways that obliterated his old assumptions. "Something huge was happening, something on a scale so large that I was lucky to see it even once in my lifetime. It was stirring economies and imaginations and possibilities like nothing I had ever known. And the more I looked at it, the more desperately I wanted to be a part of it." For those who are tempted to make a leap into High Risk/High Reward Entrepreneurship, this is "must reading" because the game to be played -- startup solitaire -- is not for the timid nor for the incompetent. Ashbrook enables his reader to accompany him each step up to his "leap", while he is airborne, and then....The book's subtitle correctly suggests that this is "a memoir of love and madness in the internet gold rush." Like so many others, Ashbrook was caught up in what was the apparently irresistible "fever" of it. What happened to him, to his family members, his friends, and his business associates? What did he learn from his experiences? It's all here, waiting for you to share it...albeit vicariously and perhaps from a position of relative security.