The New New Thing

Lewis follows Jim Clark, who founded Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon, during the period around 1998 and 1999 when Clark was building a large computerised sailboat and starting his third billion dollar company. The book is a portrait of the late 1990s technology economy through one person.

The business material covers Clark's role in changing how technology companies were financed. Netscape went public in 1995 with almost no revenue and a large loss, which had not previously been possible, and Lewis argues that this single event opened the window through which every subsequent unprofitable technology public offering passed. Clark's insistence on retaining a large founder stake, and his willingness to walk away from investors who would not accept his terms, changed the balance between founders and venture capitalists.

The Healtheon sections document a company built on a story about restructuring healthcare transactions, funded and taken public on the strength of Clark's record rather than on any working business. Lewis is ambivalent about his subject and does not resolve whether Clark was a visionary or a person who had learned to extract capital from a system that wanted to give it to him. The recurring theme is that Clark could not stop, and that each success made the next objective larger rather than sufficient.

The book is journalism written during the bubble and published shortly before it burst, which gives it an unintended documentary quality. It offers no analysis of what the period meant. The account of how the Netscape offering changed public market financing is the substantive contribution.

Financial journalist and author; former Salomon Brothers bond salesman

Liar's Poker, The Big Short and Flash Boys are the primary narrative sources later writers build on for Wall Street of the 1980s, the subprime crisis and high-frequency trading.

Vanity Fair, Salomon Brothers