The last United flight to New York is crowded, and it's going to be tight. We press against the barrier at the gate, on the balls of our Rockports, heavily laden with hand luggage, sweating in our business-casual microfibers. I check the competition.
Jack is packing up his unread technical textbooks in the spartan office of his latest startup. He looks pale, but that's nothing new: He's a Net veteran who's been working on his studio tan ever since I met him. He's got the best Web brain I know. And he just quit.
I'm having a high-fat breakfast at Il Fornaio in San Francisco with George, the smuggest man in the world. He doesn't have a dot-com. He's not a 22-year-old entrepreneur. He doesn't want to make insanely great products. He's 50, fat, happy and has something that everyone really wants.