thilly thenny

I just finished Sarah Lacy’s new book titled Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good about the transition from rise of the Internet in the 90s to the new wave of Web 2.0 companies in the Valley and beyond.  At first I was pretty skeptical of what insights the book could offer.  I do work at an award winning PR Agency thats just been touted for its development in new media (sorry for bragging; i can’t halp eet).

From page one, I was drawn to it and haven’t read something so fast since The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  Lacy’s new book offers a great summary for those not in silicon valley or those like me who just weren’t here to understand the gravity of the first Internet boom and bust.  At the dawn of Netscape, I was still in middle school, just like Mark Zuckerberg, who’s exactly one year older than me.

I loved the detail and story telling quality that came with such ease when reading Lacy’s book.  From narratives of PayPal, Netscape, Facebook and more, the book offered me the stories of entrepreneurs that made their businesses successes and why. It even helped with my SWOT analysis for a work project, something I hadn’t done since college and had sorely missed.

One of the major lessons focused on how to manage a company and going corporate, since it’s always bound to a revenue model.  Lots of companies just don’t ‘get it’ and need people who are knowledge seekers and know what’s going on.  However, the founder of the company isn’t necessarily the best person to manage it once it’s off the ground, i.e. Max Levchin from PayPal.  Similarly, an ‘experienced’ CEO may not be the right fit either.  Like a bond trader said in my Wharton class on managing through politics and across cultures, he wants people who understand the climate of a country and know the current trends, not just another research, suit type.  In other words, it’s like that not-so-good Sandra Bullock movie called Two Weeks Notice.  Hugh Grant’s real estate company needed a on-the-ground protester to really manage and understand the nonprofit projects.

I won’t divulge all the tidbits; you’ll have to get the book to discover them yourself.

What I didn’t like about the book were the summaries of web two oh companies- a bit redundant for me. But it’s nice to hear a company’s offerings explained in laymens terms and not meaningless corporate speak.

“Systems Integration Solutions, Inc. (SIS) is an Information Technology Consulting Services company that specializes in delivering technology solutions to meet the needs of our clients. SIS maintains a fundamental commitment to excellence that is evident in everything we do. Our mission is to understand and meet the needs of both our clients and consultants by delivering quality, value-added solutions.”

WTF does that tell me?  You ‘deliver’ ’solutions’ to your clients… blah blah blah quality… blah blah blah value-add.  What kind of ’solutions’?  How do you ‘deliver’ it?

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I’ll be attending the Girls in Tech event on Wednesday with Sarah Lacy to hear her take and get some questions answered.  She spent some time bashing VCs on behalf of the entrepreneurs, but what about PR?  How has the development of the MySpace API in February of this year shifted her opinion of the social network industry?  With so much talk about the semantic web that she also hinted in the book, why hasn’t anything truly revolutionary popped up in the radar?

More to come post Wednesday and check out slice, since I’ll bring the SHIFT flip cam and will try to get some video.

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UPDATED: As promised, here’s the Lacy video.  Apologies for the lack of lighting.