Steve Bennett

"I was starting to wonder how we had ever believed we were only weeks away from launch. It was a mass delusion. We either hadn’t seen, or had simply closed our eyes to, all the warning signs. So who was to blame? Was it the technology companies for making promises they couldn’t deliver? Partly. Of course it would be easy to blame Steve Bennett, but when it finally came down to it, I realized with a sinking feeling, I had to take responsibility. As the CEO, my neck was on the line, anyway. I was the one that everyone would blame if the company didn’t launch. But I knew that they'd be right too. Instead of focusing singlemindedly on just getting the website up and running, I had tried to implement an immensely complex and ambitious vision in its entirety. Our online magazine, the rollout of overseas offices, the development of new product lines to sell on our site — these were all things that could have waited until the site was in operation. But I had wanted to build utopia instantly. It had taken eleven Apollo missions to land on the moon; I had wanted to do it all in one."