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Sentences such as: There were companies going public then with zero dollars in revenues that were now worth over a hundred trillion dollars. and Jerry Le
by corin_ 16y ago
Sentences such as:
There were companies going public then with zero dollars in revenues that were now worth over a hundred trillion dollars.
and
Jerry Levin might very well have been at the table next to us buying AOL right in front of our eyes.
Make me cringe.
Am I being an idiot to assume that anyone with this kind of success (sure, this story didn't end well for him, but still extremely successful in his attempts to bring in money) ought to be able to write it up in such a way that it doesn't read like a schoolboy's work of fiction?
- acqq 16y agoYes it certainly sounds like a fiction, but it's really entertaining. I've found the plain bio of the guy here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134825 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134825 If anybody knows something useful apart from what he wrote about himself: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/about/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/about/ please add here.
- jaltucher 16y agoI should mention two things: A) every ounce of the story is true. If you read through my blog you'll see there is no fiction. Many people sometimes question the stories but, for better or for worse, I tend to throw myself into various situations. B) if you have any questions on my bio, feel free to ask me. Or, I would also advise, checking out the rest of jamesaltucher.com for the answers.
- maayank 16y agoI fucking want to write like this guy. James, do please tell how you got your writing to be as it is. (no cynicism)
- wildwood 16y agoYou can probably start here: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/how-to-steal-and-get-rich/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/how-to-steal-and-get-ri...
- brown9-2 16y agoI think the obvious exaggeration helps to portray the manic environment at the time.
- jaltucher 16y agoThere was no exaggeration at all. If anything, I left a lot out (the trip to CMGI's conference is worth an article all by itself). Plus I left out that RIMM invested and several other well-known funds.
- corin_ 16y agonow worth over a hundred trillion dollars. Unless there were companies I was unaware of that were worth more than 200 times today's most valuable companies (for example the #1 publicly traded company, Exxon Mobil, which is worth ~$370b or 270 times less that your "hundred trillion dollars", then that was definitively exaggeration. Yes, that wasn't a key fact in the story, but it does mean you can't claim that "there was no exaggeration at all."
- jaltucher 16y agoWell, that was a joke. I would say "exaggeration" would be if I said, "we raised $50mm" when we only raised "30mm" in that first round.
- corin_ 16y agoThe fact that it was written for humour not to mislead doesn't change the fact that it was exaggeration, and for sure I don't think anyone reading it thought you were genuinely trying to mislead people into thinking that companies were actually worth that much. But... it still invalidates the idea of there being no exaggeration ;)
- jaltucher 16y agoI guess if it were a computer program instead of an article it could be considered exaggeration.
- jessriedel 16y agoWhy would business success translate into literary skill? I'm work in the hard sciences, and those sentences sounds fine to me :)
- davidw 16y ago> I'm work in the hard sciences, and those sentences sounds fine to me Did you write that on purpose?
- jessriedel 16y agoUgh...I'm going to leave that ambiguous.