Burn Rate

Entertainingly snarky book about the DotCom bubble.

http://www.simonsays.com/burnrate/

Michael Wolff had one of the really stupid DotCom business ideas. But was early enough in the game that he got some stupid greedy money. The crash and burn was inevitable. In the end he abused his signing authority to write himself a nice severance check and pop off to Italy (another DotCom founder trend), leaving behind employees who got no severance at all.

"Burn rate" refers to the rate at which an unprofitable company (esp DotCom) burns through cash (provided by investors). Think of it as "negative cash flow". The point is that founders hit points of high desperation as their high burn rate gets them to the point where there's only enough money in the bank for a month of payroll, and the potential next-round investors smell blood.