Internet Entrepreneurs, The

It takes guts to lose money

Particularly when it's other people's and especially when it adds up to $4 billion.

That is roughly the sum the 13 internet entrepreneurs featured in this book lost in 1999. To be fair, a couple of them, like Yahoo's Jerry Yang, have moved into the black, or, like Netscape's Jim Barksdale, have stepped away from running a business in favour of investing.

But the point is that all 13 have in the past - and in the main have continued to do so - racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses with no end in sight.

Doesn't all that red ink irk their entrepreneurial sensibilities? Indeed it does, which is why it takes enormous bravery to keep on course when the business is hemorrhaging cash, when your investors need ...