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Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, by Michael Wolff is the account of Wolff's dotcom company, Wolff New Media, in 1997.

The "burn rate" of the title refers to the cash drain of the startup company. Most of the plot revolves around Wolff's attempts to get funding from various sources: AOL, The Washington Post and Magellan. Wolff recounts a growing animosity with his financial backers: Robert Machinist, Alan Patricof and Jon Rubin. In the end, Wolff decides to abandon the company, resigning his position, cashing his uncollected salary, and returning to his roots as a journalist, by writing a tell-all book.

In side-light chapters to the "burn rate" plot, Wolff discusses his interactions with Internet pioneers such as Louis Rossetto, his confusion about what the Internet is, where it is headed. In particular Wolff is concerned with how "media" on the Internet compares to traditional edited media, with interactive "chat" being more important than edited story-line content: "people don't read on the Internet".