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Tom Ashbrook was a longtime writer and editor for The Boston Globe. In The Leap, he tells how he became one of the founders of homePortfolio.Inc. with college friend Rolly Rouse. This excerpt chronicles Ashbrook's discovery that some dot-com ventures are less equal than others -- in his case, a lot less.

Jim Righter, Rolly's old architecture instructor, was designing a "camp" off the coast of Maine for Ed Anderson, a partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. Jim had seen our demo, liked it, liked Rolly, and suggested we talk to Ed and get his advice on raising money. Ed met us early one October morning in his sleek offices above Route 128. Bill Geary, another of the four partners in the firm, joined us.

Both had boyish features. Ed had the lilting clip of Yankee aristocracy in his voice. Bill was an edge-of-the-chair type, lots of energy. They introduced North Bridge in a warm, easygoing tone. I knew this was just supposed to be an advisory meeting, but I liked these guys. As they talked, I began to imagine that they had read our business plan and were overwhelmed with an urgent desire to invest in us.

North Bridge did active early-stage investing, they said. They got their hands dirty with the firms they worked with, really got involved. They were just closing a new $80 million investment fund. They always came in as minority investor, rarely owning more than 20% of a company. They came in expecting to work with a company for four to six years, until a "liquidity event," the sale of the company or a public stock offering that would make the company's value liquid and let them take their profits.

We listened with interest, then gave an overview of what we were up to. Consumer expectations in housing were changing. People wanted unique, high-quality homes. Manufacturers were making the best products ever but couldn't get them in front of consumers effectively. Home Depot and the big warehouse stores had come in and killed a lot of showrooms. Most consumers were seeing only a fraction of the great product options that were available. In the nick of time, here comes the digital revolution.

Affluent consumers are getting wired up, ready to learn, communicate, and buy online. That's the situation we were addressing. We would bring greater efficiency and convenience to choosing products in this big industry.

Ed and Bill nodded along politely, but they were clearly listening for something they were not hearing. "What is the value-adding proposition of your product?" asked Ed. "Give it to me in one sentence." I glibly gave them the line on the front of our latest business plan.

"We're creating the digital destination for home-design decision-making and commerce," I said. They stared quizzically, as if to say "Is that it? Is that as concrete as it gets?" I shot a hopeful look at Rolly, but he offered no miracle line to plug the gap.

"Well, let's look at the demo," said Ed, still all avuncular and friendly. We showed them. And Ed leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.

"That's a great UI," he said -- UI for "user interface." "In fact, that may be the best I've ever seen. But don't assume that the reaction your great interface gets from people like me means you've got a great business proposition."

Then he laid it out for us. We weren't going to get anything like a $5 million valuation from our next investors in BuildingBlocks, he said. Maybe $3 million, tops. Advertising-based schemes on the Internet weren't working out, said Geary. To him, it looked as if we were an information aggregator. He said it with a sympathetic look, but it sounded as though he was describing something just above garbage collector or tin scavenger. They could see the disappointment in our faces.

"Maybe you really don't want to go the VC route," said Ed. "But if you do, don't feel bad about what you have to give up in equity. We've built plenty of companies that ended up with values of six or seven hundred million dollars, and the founders go away with ten percent feeling very good indeed." Ten percent! We shifted uncomfortably in our chairs. The meeting was ending. They were smart and experienced and kind. But they couldn't see our value-adding proposition. God help us.

"Maybe you should raise another million from friends and family," Ed said as we packed up the laptop. "You could get your product built, then come back to the VC channel."

We walked to the car in silence. Another million from friends and family! Exactly what million would that be?

"I feel like I just got hit in the back of the head with a two-by-four," Rolly said. "We can't even articulate our value-add!"

We drove back to the office, parked and slumped into the sub shop for lunch. Stever was already gone. Shawns' Ph.D. work was taking longer than expected, so he still wasn't around much. Rolly and I were working every night and every weekend, but the money was dribbling away faster than we could work. It wasn't clear now that we had the resources to get the product built. And Ed Anderson couldn't see our value-add, the essential value-adding proposition that would make BuildingBlocks a moneymaker.

This was not a pretty picture.

"I'm ordering lunch," Rolly said, "and I feel like I should be throwing up."

From the next table I heard a familiar riff of Internet babble about servers and GIFs and download times. Two young guys, Dag and Tak, with their own new Internet company around the corner. My God, I thought, everybody's starting an Internet company. You can't go out for a sandwich without running into another crew jumping into the gold rush. Dag mentioned he had been married for a year and felt as though he had almost never seen his wife. Life was work. Just work.

Excerpted from THE LEAP, A MEMOIR OF LOVE AND MADNESS IN THE INTERNET GOLD RUSH, by Tom Ashbrook. Reprinted by permission of the publisher Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I knew the feeling, I said. And I was diving in with three kids. I had just missed most of Ben's school concert the night before, the latest of a quickly mounting heap of missed moments. Tak looked over. I knew he was trying to guess my age.

"It's a risky business," he finally said. "I don't know if I would have the guts to to it in your shoes."

Pass the barf bag.