The Industry Standard — Beginning and End.

As good a place as any to lose your company.

Note: Third in a series. First post, second post.

The Oak Grove cemetery in Tisbury, Massachusetts encompasses roughly ten acres of rolling woodlands and narrow dirt roads. Its 1,800 or so headstones date back two centuries, making Oak Grove a relative newcomer as New England graveyards go. I’ve been visiting this sacred, spectral spot on the island of Martha’s Vineyard for nearly five decades. Half my family is buried there.

Late August, 2001. I am sitting on my grandfather’s gravestone in the cemetery’s relative cool. A breeze keeps the mosquitoes at bay. A cell phone is glued to my ear; the right side of my head sweats from the battery’s heat. Or perhaps it’s the nature of the call. I am presiding over the final meeting of the Board of Directors for Standard Media International, a company I founded in 1997. I didn’t know if I’d find cell service in the cemetery — mobile service was notoriously sketchy on the island. But if I had to endure the death of something precious to me while on vacation, I wanted to do it in the company of my grandfather’s ghost. If I couldn’t find a signal, so much the better. Everyone knew how I was going to vote.

Few in the tech industry remember The Industry Standard, the “newsmagazine of the Internet Economy.” It ceased publication during the 2001 dot-com crash, six years before the…