A Very Public Offering
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Product Details
Publisher: Actarus Press
Release Date: November 8, 2018
Formats: Paperback, Ebook, Audiobook
ISBN: PB: 978-1-7329324-0-1; EB: 978-1-7329324-1-8
Trim: 5.5 x 8.5
Page Count: 280
The Story of theglobe.com and the First Internet Revolution
Stephan Paternot
In the volatile world of internet start-ups, it can take just a nanosecond to lose it all.
A decade before Facebook, Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman created the first social network in their college dorm room. After a meteoric rise, theglobe.com became world-famous for its billion-dollar IPO, only to quickly plummet toward the depths. This very personal history details what it was like to witness the chaotic birth of the internet industry.
One of the poster boys of the dot-com era, Stephan rode the wild high of seeing his digital dreams come true, only to confront the sometimes-ugly reality of being the youngest-ever CEO of a public company. As Stephan navigated a fledgling and cutthroat industry, he struggled to keep his company afloat.
Chronicling a surreal, upside-down period in American corporate history, A Very Public Offering tells the dramatic personal story of a young man’s rocket toward success, and what happens when it all falls apart. Reissued to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of theglobe.com’s IPO and adding powerful and practical lessons for a new generation of start-up founders, this edition expands upon Stephan’s story featured in the National Geographic TV series Valley of the Boom.
About the Author
Stephan Paternot is co-founder and CEO of Slated, the world’s first online film finance marketplace, where over 1,200 films have received over $1.25 billion in investor introductions as of 2018. Stephan is also co-founder of PalmStar, a film production and financing company that has helped bring to life over 30 films including HEREDITARY (2018), COLLATERAL BEAUTY (2016), SING STREET (2016) and JOHN WICK (2014). In addition, Stephan is the founder and general partner of the Actarus Funds, which have backed companies including LendingClub, SecondMarket, Indiegogo, AngelList, Digital Currency Group, and more.
Prior to these ventures, Paternot is best known for co-founding one of the first Internet community sites, theglobe.com, in 1994. The company set stock market history when it went public in 1998 with a record-setting IPO, pushing the company valuation to over $1 billion. Over a six-year span, the company grew to over 300 employees, and the website became one of the top thirty most trafficked sites in the world. In 1999 Stephan won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and in 2001 published his memoir, A Very Public Offering, detailing his experience at theglobe.com. A Very Public Offering was updated and reissued in 2018 in conjunction with the worldwide release of the National Geographic Television series Valley of the Boom, in which Paternot is featured as a character.
Reviews
“Like a modern-day Dickens, Stephan Paternot witnessed the best and worst of times.” —Los Angeles Times
“Stephan Paternot, former CEO of theglobe.com and world-famous instant millionaire, offers up an engaging memoir that documents the dramatic rise and precipitous fall of the online company he founded. Although Paternot generously shares his personal experiences and struggles, his book also serves as a capsule history of a particular moment in American culture, a moment in which Wall Street’s mania for Internet ventures allowed capital to be invested with a seeming disregard for consequences or common sense . . . The next chapter in Stephan Paternot’s life is bound to be interesting, and probably successful as well.” —Barnes & Noble Review
“Part morality tale, part fairy tale, and part college diary. . . The book is hard not to like. Mr. Paternot ably captures one of life’s rare moments, when the spotlight is shining on you and you haven’t figured out yet that it will soon go dark.” —Wall Street Journal
“It’s a first-person account by somebody who lived through the roller coaster.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“In this giddy, fast-moving memoir, [Paternot] wisely focuses on the day-to-day mania of the mid and late 90s Internet Revolution, vividly showing what it felt like to run a brand-new company racing headlong across unknown terrain.” —Publishers Weekly
“It was the greatest Cinderella story in Silicon Alley history.” —New York Post