Inside The Cult Of Kibu - Company Business and Marketing

Industry Standard, The, Dec 25, 2000 by Lori Gottlieb

When a med student hops aboard a hot startup for teen girls, she figures she'll help change the world. These people know what they're doing, right?

When I signed on with a high-profile Internet startup last spring. I couldn't believe my good fortune. The gig came with a VP title, 70,000 stock options (pre-IPO, match), and the promise of "influencing an entire generation." Three months later, though, I walked out with nothing but an overwhelming sense of disillusionment, a box of glitter nail polish and a video entitled An Intimate Guide to Male Genital Massage.

If my story sounds familiar (except for the massage part), there's a good reason. Like thousands of young, ambitious hopefuls lured by the digital gold rush, I discovered the hard way that this brave new frontier promised nothing more than fool's gold.

It's no accident that the modern-day gold rush was centered in the San Francisco Bay Area, where previous generations had flocked to secure a seat on Ken Kesey's bus or tap into their human potential with EST. Just as these movements expanded the frontiers of consciousness, the dot-com movement was supposed to expand the frontiers of commerce. And loftier still: It was supposed to shape our very Future. By the beginning of this year, the startup world was hailed as the grooviest show in town, the "be in" of the millennium. No wonder it was irresistible, even to me.

I was, at that time, a medical student at Stanford who'd left a career in Hollywood. In the benighted pre-dot-com era, medicine had been considered virtuous and moviemaking cutting edge. But suddenly nothing seemed as noble as connecting the world via the Internet, nothing as cutting edge as exploring the limits of cyberspace. Along with so many others who happily chucked stable professional endeavors, I yearned for a place on the dot-com bus.

And then I got my ticket: I'd just published a book based on my teen diaries, and a venture capitalist put me in touch with the CEO of a startup described as a "digital hangout" for teen girls. Her company's mission was to "empower" girls while grabbing a piece of the highly coveted teenage demographic. Each of the Web site's so-called channels -- ranging from Wellness to Beauty to Adventure -- would be run by an adult mentor/guide, called a "Face" (there was a Face of Wellness and a Face of Adventure, for example), whom the CEO described as "a cross between a big sister and an MTV veejay." The Faces would produce their own channels, write smart, inspiring content and interact with teen girls in cyberspace. When I was offered the position of vice president and editor-in-chief, I eagerly jumped aboard.

The bus was called Kibu.com. So what if it was a name that no one could pronounce or even clearly define? I was joining the party, to the tune of a $22 million first-round investment. But what I forgot was this: Eventually the party ends, and you always come down from the acid trip.

month 1: warning signs

Even before I showed up for work the first week, there were signs that my bus might have some mechanical problems. Consider:

* Kibu didn't check my references before offering me the job. Not one. I doubt that they had checked the references of the other 50-plus employees already on staff. Which makes sense if you consider that the trendy twentysomethings hired to produce their own channels included a hair stylist, a Saks counter makeup artist and a former fashion model. I mean, whom could they call for a reference, Eileen Ford?

* Mere moments after I was told that the CEO's management style was about "total openness," I was asked to keep information that a current editor was leaving a secret.

* At the prelaunch party the Friday before my start date, several of the Faces hailed me as their "savior." "We can't write content!" they bleated. "We're about to launch and have no idea what we're doing!" Given that there were 20 Faces and only one of me, I warned them that change might be slow. "That's OK, we love you already!" they said. "Well, you may not love me next week," I joked. "If we don't, we'll just replace you," replied the Face of Adventure. I wasn't sure if she was kidding.

Despite these ominous signs, I gushed to friends about how I couldn't wait to take leave from medical school to start my exotic new job. Sounds crazy, I know, but I can explain it in two words: Jim Jones. It was like everyone in the dot-com world -- from board members and investors to employees paid in soon-to-be worthless stock options -- had imbibed from the same keg of Kool-Aid. The result: mass delusion as sweeping as that at Jonestown. In order to join a dot-com, you had to completely suspend your disbelief. We were, after all, "venturing into uncharted territory," "breaking away from conventional paradigms" and "tearing up the old rules."

And I was willing to drink the sickly sweet punch -- if only because everyone else was. I'd never worked at an Internet company, or a startup of any kind, and frankly, these people seemed to be doing well. They drove $60,000 cars. They thought nothing of spending $20 on lunch each day. Our CEO had started a company that sold to Mattel for $26 million. Our investors included former Netscape guru Jim Clark and the most prestigious backer of all, the valley's VC firm of the moment, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Who was I to question their wisdom?