TABLE OF CONTENTS "I am not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
Woody Allen
Like most start-up companies, Gee Whiz Media (GWM) was the product of the visionary zeal of its founder Dan Durand. Dan had a longstanding reputation in the local technology community of being a gifted visionary who put a premium on honesty. In the industry, he was known for his integrity in his relationships with employees, customers, and suppliers. This reputation had come from several successful start-ups he had taken public in the 1980s. He found that this was a particularly good way to do business because those with whom he dealt generally were willing to accept his word at face value. This reputation was to serve him well in his next venture.
In the late 1980s, an emerging technology called multimedia caught Dan's imagination. CD-ROMs were one of the few media with the capacity to store such diverse types of information as sound, video, and text. As PCs became commonplace, Dan believed that CD-ROMs would revolutionize in-home entertainment by allowing users to interact easily with the new media. Dan convinced the owner of a local retail computer store to provide space for him to demonstrate the wonders of multimedia. He reasoned that if consumers saw that computers didn't need to be boring, they might buy a complete system including a CD-ROM drive, speakers, and graphics programs. Dan would...
