Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Prologue: A Good Day to Go Public; PART 1; The American Dream; The World Wide What?; The Origin of the Internet and How Two Cornell Freshmen Glimpsed the Future; The Early Days: Paying in Pizza and Minimum Wage and the Hunt for VC Dollars: Ten Meetings, Ten Rejections; New York Groove: How 3,000 Miles in a Toyota Corolla Turned into USD20 Million; Michael Egan and the Road to the IPO; New York, New York: A Brave New World; The Road Show: 60 Meetings, 20 Cities, 10 Days; PART 2; A Public Figure: Life during Internet Mania and a Heavy Dose of Hackers! Acquisition Mania; The Double-Edged Sword: The Media Attacks My Black Plastic Pants and My "Disgusting and Frivolous Lifestyle"; The Downward Spiral Part I: The Slow Tumble; The Downward Spiral Part II: My Dad; The Downward Spiral Part III: Mutiny and the Decision; The Second Coming; Epilogue; Appendix: Where Are They Now?; Cast; Index.

About the Author

STEPHAN PATERNOT cofounded theglobe.com while attending Cornell University. By age 24 Paternot was worth over USD97 million and set stock market history when he successfully took theglobe.com public. In his six years as CEO, he assembled a world--class management team including industry veterans from CBS and Simon & Schuster. Theglobe.com was frequently ranked as one of the top thirty sites in the world with revenues peaking at USD30 million in 2000. Shortly thereafter, Paternot stepped aside as CEO and threw himself into his lifelong dream of being in the film industry, working as both an actor and a film producer. Paternot, represented by UTA, one of Hollywood's most influential talent agencies, produced and starred in Shutter, a finalist at four film festivals, and has now completed his second film, Wholey Moses, co--starring Linda Hamilton and Shannyn Sossamon.

Reviews

On November 13, 1998, Internet startup theglobe.com opened on Wall Street with the largest IPO in stock history. Literally overnight, the online community's cofounder, 24-year-old Paternot, became a multimillionaire and dot-com prodigy in the eyes of the adoring media. But, as he documents in this giddy, fast-moving memoir, fortune can turn quickly: less than two years later, theglobe.com's stock price plummeted close to zero, Paternot's personal wealth evaporated and the press savagely attacked him and his partner, Todd Krizelman, as "global poster boys of Internet excess." Paternot briskly recounts the story of his rise and fall, briefly sketching his childhood before he arrived at Cornell University, where he and Krizelman started theglobe.com in 1994. After graduating, they moved the company to New York City's nascent Silicon Alley. Paternot would party all night at trendy Manhattan nightclubs before hopping on a private jet to woo big-name investors. But when the stock price began to tumble, the press blamed Paternot and Krizelman even though, as Paternot points out, theglobe.com was one of the few start-ups actually turning a profit. The sustained attacks took their toll, and in August 2000, with the stock at just $2 a share, Paternot resigned as CEO. Rarely bitter (though the collapse of other dot-coms did give him some vindication), he wisely focuses on the day-to-day mania of the mid- and late '90s "Internet revolution," vividly showing what it felt like to run a brand-new company racing headlong across unknown terrain. (Sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.