Paul Carr‘s book on the London Internet startup-scene, “Bringing Nothing to the Party“, is an enjoyable read. The location is Internet London, the main character is Paul as Holden Caulfield and the storyline resembles “How to lose friends and alienate people”.
On jealousy as a motivator during the dot-com recovery, aka web2.0:
People who six months before had been struggling to break even were now starting to get more money from investors and even buyout offers from big media companies. The less Schaden they experienced, the less freude I felt. My jealousy was moving from mild, to strong, to intense to seething.
And on angel investors:
Quite why [they] need to call themselves angels is not entirely clear, but, frankly, if someone is giving you a couple of hundred grand, you’ll call them whatever they want you to. “Who’s your angel?” “You are, you big, generous hunk of money you.”
It’s the antitheses to the “how they made it big” genre popular in start-up literature. As Sarah Lacey puts it:
Anyone who’s seduced by the Web dream, should read my book (duh!) but then read Paul’s book immediately afterwards.
