It's a story, you silly fools. It's called fiction. It's pretty good, though I feel like a lot of the length was kind of redundant; it would have been better shorter. Or, as George Carlin put it:
>I’ve also grown weary of reading about clouds in a book. Doesn’t this piss you off? You’re reading a nice story, and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds. Who cares?.......I’m not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the fucking. The only story I know of where clouds are important was Noah’s Ark!
I was wondering why I hadn't heard anything about it :P
I found the whole writing style very fast-paced. You just get a snapshot of what the character is going through as he finds himself whisked into... Fame? Fortune?
I'm probably the wrong audience for this story, just like I'm sure doctors are the wrong audience for Grey's Anatomy. Just like a doctor would think, "this show makes it seem like doctors have sex constantly in storage closets," I'm thinking, "what VC makes and closes an offer with over the course of one meal?"
Still, entertaining read, thought it was clever the way email and tweet graphics were used throughout.
I think in this case it is more accurate to label it as a parody. It sets up an exaggerated scenario that is clearly ridiculous, but it is only far enough from the current tulip mania to strip away some of the artifice. It's more akin to the I.T. Crowd (but with more verisimilitude), in which case we are exactly the right audience for it.
I do know of term sheet offers within 30 minutes. However, not for such a high valuation though. But it isn't outside the bounds of reality, especially during particularly 'frothy' times - like mid-last year.
Did anyone else find this to be skeevy/pervy typical male nerd fantasy bullshit?
Too often Sci-Fi books go down this path as well, taking what could be an otherwise compelling story and turning it into ... this. (Daemon by Daniel Suarez is the first thing that comes to mind)
I should make it a point that frank discussions of sex and human sexuality don't bother me in the least, but drugged-up-sex-power-struggle-bullshit? Mer.
This startup literature reminds me of the best stuff that came out of the last boom... everyone seems to have forgotten about it or been too young to remember.
Two of my favorites:
Starving to death on 200 Million (The Industry Standard)
I got sucked in at the beginning also. I admit that I haven't read other fiction stories in the startup genre so it also took me a while to figure it out, except that I did all seem a bit too good to be true.
The fake tweets about vomiting all over the stage were definitely entertaining.
I really liked that. I read it without realizing it was story. So I was shocked when I got to the end and saw the writer credit! I thought it very believable, even if some of you didn't buy the VC making an immediate offer.
Pretty incredible that within a few months on being fired someone can write an app that makes them million of dollars, while other people struggle to get their businesses up and running even after years.
Because writers don't speak epub yet? I realize your question was hypothetical but there are a zillion things that generate PDF out there and only a few that generate EPUB or other mobile friendly format.
No. But PDFs are really seeing a resurgence thanks to tablets, especially the iPad. It's the one kind of formatting that's pushbutton and done. Anyone who uses Word can create one. [typo edit]
>I’ve also grown weary of reading about clouds in a book. Doesn’t this piss you off? You’re reading a nice story, and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds. Who cares?.......I’m not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the fucking. The only story I know of where clouds are important was Noah’s Ark!