Net Dreams

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'When?'

He can't remember when. Is he sapped, worn out? He'd prefer to think his 'creative energy is now channeled into [his] company.'

Ben was born in Taiwan but grew up in Toronto. When you graduate from college, you're supposed to spend time thinking about who you are so you can answer questions about what you want to be. Ben didn't know who he was, so he went back to Taiwan to find out. There he started some clubs.

In Taiwan, all business is based on guanxiórelationships. Having great ability, a great club, great style, wasn't enough. Ben worried that in the end the only way to get ahead was to know the 'right people'ówho would tell you how to make the right payoffs at the right times to 'the black and the white,' the organized element and the cops.

Ben came here hoping to get away from that, and he believes the Internet will be a level playing field. His KillerApp is a price-comparison shopping engineóyou can go to his site and find out who has the cheapest computer prices. Ben built the code himself. His days are 18 hours long. He still doesn't have any friendsóonly business acquaintances.

He walks me out to my car. It's hot enough to melt the asphalt into that freshly-laid-tar smell. We rehash what we've already said. I get the feeling Ben doesn't want me to leave.

At 10 o'clock Michael Zilly is supposed to hook up with a man named Henry Silva Jr. who might invest that 80 'G-large' Zilly needs. They are supposed to meet at the Big Brother & the Holding Company poster in the front lobby of the legendary Fillmore music hall, which is where we're standing.

'There's no turning back,' says Zilly.

For the past two years, Zilly funded his startup by growing ganja in the western Massachusetts swamps and selling it wholesale. Giving up that life and coming out here is not a sellout. It is not like giving up one's noble ideals and deciding to make a killing in real estate. Here he's continuing the adventure, maybe even ratcheting it up a notch. Having a B.S., an M.B.A., and part of an M.S. prepares a guy for an exotic career track.

But Zilly came here because he'd like to wipe his darker past from his rÈsumÈ. And the experience may prove invaluable. If the metric of success in Silicon Valley is one's willingness to throw oneself into situations most people would feel are out of control, then Michael Zilly should be a paper millionaire within 12 months. This is his strength: taking risks.

The next month I have lunch again with Hardy Boy Scott Krause. Intershop, the company he quit because it wasn't challenging enough, had gone public. He'd given up his stock options.

I ask about this near miss with sudden wealth.

'I don't think about it,' he says.

'As in ëI avoid thinking about it,' or as in ëIt's just not on my mind'?'

'I've got the best job now I've ever had,' he asserts.

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