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Starting Something: An Entrepreneur's Tale of Corporate Culture

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Starting Something: An Entrepreneur's Tale of Corporate Culture

(23 customer reviews)

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A must-read for all entrepreneurs. The story of Neoforma, a software firm that accidentally became a dotcom darling and eventually a public company. Starting Something engages the reader with the captivating story of how Neoforma survived its struggles against daunting obstacles--and in the process delivers on a very human level a wealth of insight, information, and advice for entrepreneurs.

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Product Details

Author:	Wayne McVicker
Paperback:	409 pages
Publisher:	Ravel Media LLC
Publication Date:	January 15, 2006
Language:	English
ISBN:	1932881026
Product Length:	8.44 inches
Product Width:	5.54 inches
Product Height:	1.03 inches
Product Weight:	1.27 pounds
Package Length:	8.4 inches
Package Width:	5.5 inches
Package Height:	1.1 inches
Package Weight:	1.25 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 23 reviews

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: 4.5

( 23 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Surviving the Internet Boom and Bust with Idealism Intact Feb 28, 2005 By James Barnes
In 1996, when architect/designer/visionary hipster Wayne McVicker and a partner launched the healthcare website, Neoforma.com, he just wanted to live the life of a creative entrepreneur while helping make the world a better place. He soon realized that he'd climbed aboard a careening, billion-dollar roller coaster ride.

This is a story of survival in the Silicon Valley fast lane, told with honesty, warmth and humor. As the Neoforma database of healthcare products and services grew, so did their e-commerce traffic and business potential - but they were tapped out. Thus began a parade of mentors, "angel" investors, and venture capitalists who expected tenfold pay-offs. Still insisting on playing by their own rules, the partners were slow to warm up to Valley start-up culture. McVicker says it took a long time to find making money an acceptable pursuit unto itself. But these were heady times. In 1998, they received a two million-dollar cash infusion, and were being called the "Amazon and Yahoo of healthcare." There was no backing out now.

Trapped in the role of an aggressive, ultra-competent entrepreneur, McVicker weathered every investor, customer and employee crisis as it arose. He struggled to balance his work and family life, while the business grew at breakneck speed. He began to compartmentalize the stress, lost the ability to communicate with his partner and his wife, and luckily, found help before his marriage failed and the company he'd so proudly nurtured was wrenched away from him.

Follow the Neoforma saga with all its growing pains, as they buy up companies, merge with others, and launch their IPO. Watch the stock rise to $72 and see Wayne become a mega-millionaire. Listen to the bubble bursting and the market crashing, dropping the stock to $7 overnight. Through it all, McVicker strives to maintain the idealistic corporate culture of integrity and empowerment the company was founded on. In 2001, he'd "worked his way to the bottom," created a new niche, and left Neoforma to launch a brand new venture.

Don't miss this Internet fairy tale with profound lessons for business cultures of any size.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

Excellent ...Not Your Typical Business Book Feb 27, 2005 By Anita Campbell "Editor, Small Business Trends, www.smallbiztrends.com"
"I made a few hundred million. I lost a few hundred million."

Those are the opening lines of this fascinating tale of the people and events involved in the IPO of Neoforma, a company that went public in the midst of the Dot Com era.

Those two lines are icons of the Dot Com era, when technology entrepreneurs turned into millionaires overnight. And sometimes the money disappeared just as fast as it came, when the Dot Com market went bust.

"Starting Something" is not what I expected. It was much much more -- and much better.

When I started reading this book I expected another business "how-to" with lots of bullet points and lists of do's and don'ts. I used to read lots of such books. But once you've read several dozen of them, it's hard to get excited over any of them.

That's why I was delighted to find that this book read like a novel, except the events were true. This book is about the emotion and relationships in business, especially the strong emotion that comes from a stressful situation, such as the rapid growth that Neoforma experienced leading up to its IPO, and its demanding investors.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from this book. The book is set up in short chapters. Each chapter is a vignette, capturing a particular event or bit of drama. The business lessons evolve out of each vignette. They are powerful lessons -- much more powerful than if they'd been delivered as how-to lists.

The great thing about the book's format is that you can set it down for a day or two, and come back and read a few more chapters. It's very digestible and practical for people who have to snatch reading time here and there when they can get it.

The author speaks to the reader like a real, live, genuine human being. Whether talking about his family and the financial pressures of the company's early days, or his frustration when it seems that the company's technology doesn't work well, or his chagrin when he senses that investors and others don't find his resume as impressive as their own -- it's presented in a way that each of us can identify with.

Anyone considering a startup, involved in a startup, formerly in a startup, or close to anyone involved in a startup or small business should read "Starting Something."

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

The Best Book I Read This Past Year Feb 25, 2005 By R. May
I can say without hesitation it is the best business book I have read in the past year, and is #2 on my list of all-time favorite business books. What makes it so awesome? Maybe the subtitle is a hint "An Entrepreneur's Tale of Control, Confrontation, and Corporate Culture." It is great because it is so unlike any other business book I have ever read. Wayne even told me he wasn't even sure it should be classified as a business book. But it should. This book is all about business. It is about the side of business you never see. It's about the side of business that can make you both love and hate being an entrepreneur.

The book tells the story of Neoforma, a company founded by Wayne and his partner Jeff. (Neoforma is somewhat famous in investing circles for it's substantial stock price fall.) The book traces the beginning of the idea through the start-up phase, the venture capital phase, the IPO, and the time when founders leave the company to do other things. And the story is very compelling. I was on vacation in Las Vegas when I began the book, and I spent much more time in my room reading than I did at the casinos. I just could not put this book down. It is a first person account of all the joy and pain that take place during the birth of a new company.

The best part of Starting Something is reading about Wayne's own struggles with what is happening around him. He is at times confident, yet at other times confused. He sometimes believes Neoforma will be a huge success and other times questions whether the company will be around next month. He hits some problems out of the ballpark, and other times he strikes out completely. In other words, he shows that he is human. He has a dream for the company, but he has to make very difficult choices that have both business and personal consequences.

This book should be required reading for anyone pursuing an entrepreneurial path, because it exposes the people side of business that few business books explore. The lessons about employees, investors, and the importance of corporate culture are plentiful.

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

warren Aug 23, 2006 By Anthony Warren "entrepreneurship professor"
This books tells it like it is. I was so impressed with the frankness and engaging writing style that I adopted this book for courses at Penn State. I even visited the author and video'ed the key characters to get even more insight. Every budding entrepreneur should read this. -It covers nearly every management issue that a start-up confronts - finding money, mentors, family stresses, bad hires, dealing with VC's and angels, going public, change management, ethics, choosing partners, negotiating with corporations - you name it its here. I have recommended this book to all of my business and academic contacts - without exception they loved it. Tony Warren

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

A New Twist to Add Dec 28, 2005 By Anil Singhal "MD"
I just read "Starting Something" for the second time - this time more closely-- and truly enjoyed it. Wayne did a great job giving the personal feeling of the environment. It meant a lot to me since I was with Neoforma from early 1998 to present (2006)! I lived through many portions of what Wayne and Jeff did, and as I read the book I enjoyed transforming many of the pseudonyms to the real people I had interacted with in those early years.

One important new twist is how NEOF has just recently been bought by the healthcare manufacturer consortium (GHX) which was originally set up to compete/crush it!

I highly recommend Starting Something to all next generation entrepreneurs, as well as former entrepreneurs - all of those who were in the world wind of power, money and control of that era.

Anil Singhal, MD

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