LJNDawson.com, Consulting to the Book Publishing Industry
Book Publishing Industry Consultant

July 1, 2005

In 1995, more or less the dawn of the Internet age, I was hired by a small company located in a warehouse in Williamsburg. Like a scene out of Brazil, there were wires draped everywhere, dust floating into our coffee (we learned to put index cards over our coffee cups in between sips), constant blowing of fuses (both electric and emotional). This was Muze, already 5 years old, a company supplying data about CDs, videos, and - as of 1995 - books, to clients such as Amazon, MSN, and Borders.

What I loved about Muze was its resemblance to a
skunkworks, its lab-like atmosphere and the sense that we were doing work that was either massively groundbreaking or massively irrelevant. We kept expecting the company to go out of business at any moment - and it never did.

Trev Huxley (yes, grandson of Aldous), one of its founders, left the company in 1990. Paul Zullo, the other founder, just departed the other day, and has been replaced by one Bill Stensrud, previously an executive at the venture capital company that acquired Muze. A quick Googling of Mr. Stensrud brings up bucketloads of praise. Perhaps he'll be the guy to finally bring Muze into its own. One can hope....
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