introduction

"What better way to say 'we're a start-up that's going to make it' than a big, beautiful chandelier."

An introduction should begin at the beginning. And this book's journey began in the 90s, when I worked at HotWired. I had a problem that I was sure a book could solve.

It was San Francisco during the boom, and the web was growing so quickly and dramatically that it was hard to keep track of all the changes. Everything was new from the technology to the business models and we struggled to train our growing staff on everything we'd learned so far.

I would always wish I had a manual that I could just hand to new employees and say, "Here. This is everything we've learned about the web. Read it, and then we'll get started."

This, I hope, is that manual.