Inside the Cult of Kibu: And Other Tales of the Millennial Gold Rush Horror Book Review

In the spring of 2000, Lori Gottlieb was lured away from Stanford Medical School to become editor-in-chief of Kibu.com, a high-profile Silicon Valley startup dubbed at various times in the make-it-up-as-you-go-along Internet Zeitgeist as anything from a “digital lifestyle brand” to “Yahoo! for Gen Y, with an estrogen slant.”  But after her comically unceremonious “unhiring” three months later, upon the CEO’s return from her elopement in Bali, Gottlieb published an exposé in The Industry Standard.  Her essay inspired hundreds of emails in response, including one from Jesse Jacobs, then the head of content for IFILM.com, the Net’s leading online film site.   

  They clicked, so to speak, and embarked on a journey to produce a very personal collective memoir of the New Economy.  The result is a one-of-a-kind backstage pass to a world of extremes: brilliance and inanity, exhilaration and desperation, and of course, money (real and imagined).  Weaving together Gottlieb’s experiences at Kibu with those of nearly 100 participants-from media icon Kurt Andersen to popular Bay-area author Po Bronson to Public Enemy rapper Chuck D, Gottlieb and Jacobs present an oral history of a time that is now imprinted, for better or worse, on our collective psyche.  Featuring a richly engaging and incisive tapestry of voices from the front lines-venture capitalists and engineers, receptionists and lawyers, advertising executives and CEOs, party planners and pundits, media moguls and MBAs-Inside the Cult of Kibu is much more than an account of life in an alternate universe. It’s a unique reflection of what happens when business, technology, and popular culture combine and ignite in a spectacular display.