Chapter 8 elicited more comment than any of the others so far. That’s because the theme of a startup getting screwed by big players, principally Microsoft, still resonates with people. It’s probably still going on with AI, too
The story of GO is taken directly from founder Jerry Kaplan’s book Startup. I wasn’t at GO, but Jerry’s been very friendly and helpful to me. They ended up partnering with AT&T instead, and the phrase “no one makes money dealing with AT&T” comes from me. It’s almost true that no one makes money dealing with IBM, either, but a few startups have been acquired by them, I guess: Rational Machines and Metaphor, to name a couple. GO also had its time wasted by IBM.
Matt’s wife Miriam plays the part of an innocent outsider, a time-honored fictional device for allowing exposition. The science fiction cliché is that the wise old man explains everything to an attractive young girl, so at least I’m not doing that!
Miriam doesn’t understand how any of this works, except she’s seen with her own eyes how much money is involved, and she wants Matt to get her some.
You might also notice the reference to Matt and Miriam’s kitchen island, which Janet’s contractor husband Walt built for them. This was a major flash point in The Big Bucks, my previous book. Miriam changed the job in the middle, requiring Walt to jackhammer the concrete foundation of their Eichler house, because those old houses don’t have crawl spaces. You can imagine The Remodeling Job From Hell, and this was it.
Oracle
I was, in fact, at Oracle starting March 1991.
It was fun, actually. There were divisions that actually were sweatshops, like the reputation, but mine wasn’t one.
Tokie’s is still around, although it wasn’t in downtown San Mateo then; it was in Foster City.
"No one makes money dealing with AT&T", huh? They should have told that to the folks at WarnerMedia before Ma Bell screwed them over.