from The Prince of Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble by Randall Smith:
With the markets faltering, Jackson wasn’t sure his deal would get done. It would be humiliating to return without the $60 million the IPO was supposed to raise for his company. The day the deal was finally completed and the stock began trading, his children skipped school to watch in his office, and Jackson appeared on TV with Neil Cavuto on the Fox network. “Well, who said a rocky market is no place for an IPO? Not the folks over at Intraware,” Cavuto said. “Despite today’s high-tech tumble, guess what? Shares of the Internet software consulting firm surged nearly 15 percent on their first day of trading.” Jackson responded that the IPO proceeds would enable him to expand globally. Right behind him was former heavyweight boxer George Foreman, who was promoting his grill.
Suddenly, Jackson was worth $65 million on paper. He was about to hire three hundred people. He rounded the corner from the Fox studios and, alone on the streets of Midtown Manhattan, he burst into tears.
What he didn’t know what that over the next two years, he would nearly lose control of his company. Venture capital investors would conclude that Intraware was bleeding money hopelessly. Intraware would come close to running out of cash and being delisted by the NASDAQ stock market. Lise Buyer would leave CSFB, which would stop publishing research on his stock. And the CSFB bankers would stop calling.
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