One of Minor’s next projects, a business incubator called 12 Entrepreneuring, was closely watched. He co-founded it with Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm, and entrepreneur Eric Greenberg, who had already taken public two internet consultancies. Partly, the intrigue centered on Minor. But 12 Entrepreneuring also raised a stunning $137 million from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including eBay’s Pierre Omidyar; serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen; angel investor Ron Conway, one of Google’s first backers; and Ted Waitt, a friend of Minor’s who founded the PC maker Gateway.

What followed was a high-speed train wreck. Minor first clashed with Greenberg, who left the company after just six months. According to Minor, the next big problem was the “alpha male” board members like Andreessen and Omidyar, who didn’t like the way Minor was running things. “Every one of them thought I should do as they said,” he explains.

“Every one of them will tell you that I did a bad job. It was like filling a bucket with dynamite and putting a long fuse on it.”

The kicker was the market’s cannonball dive in 2000. Though 12 Entrepreneuring had funded just three companies, to the tune of $33 million, its investors were feeling the impact of the dot bomb all around them, and they wanted their money back. Conway was the ringleader.

“Ron literally called me at the airport and said, ‘I have nothing against you, but I’m going to make your life a living hell if you don’t give me my money back,’ ” Minor says. “And he did.” After some back-and-forth, Minor grudgingly returned Conway’s portion of what money was left. Just 18 months after the business was started, only $40 million remained out of the original $137 million. The spat alienated Minor from the power players who had once supported him. “Ted Waitt and I aren’t friends,” Minor says.

When I tell Minor something Conway recently said to me—that “no one is ever going to give Halsey another nickel”—he throws back his head and laughs forcefully. Twenty minutes later, in the middle of discussing another subject, he interrupts himself to say, “Why doesn’t Ron just go on with his life?”

It’s hard to fault Minor for the towering regard he has for his own instincts. When he first pitched CNET to venture capitalists, they passed, leaving him to live off credit cards and friends for nearly a year, until a $5 million investment from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen saved the day.

Even those who bad-mouth him chalk up his successes to much more than good luck. “He’s very bright,” says a former CNET executive who no longer speaks to Minor, for reasons he wouldn’t discuss. “There’s no better guy in front of the whiteboard, in terms of being really smart and quick on his feet and being able to see what others don’t.” Another tech executive who worked closely with Minor for several years but now no longer wants his name associated with him adds, “He’s an easy guy to demonize. He’s kind of arrogant; he has an edge. But there’s no question that when he wants to, he gets things done.”

But perhaps this comes at the expense of having close, lasting relationships. When I ask Minor for names of business associates whom I might interview for this profile, he first recommends the agent who sold him Fierce Wind, one of his Thoroughbreds, and then suggests Mitch Fox, a former Condé Nast publishing director whom he met earlier this year and hired to run one of his startups. When I push for names of those who have known him longer, Minor suggests that I speak with Shelby Bonnie, his first employee at CNET, who later served as the company’s chief executive after Minor left. But Bonnie, now an entrepreneur in Sausalito, California, declined to discuss his former friend.

Acquaintances of Bonnie’s say he and Minor haven’t been on good terms for years.

Minor tells me that he was once close with Marc Benioff, the C.E.O. of Salesforce.com, and that he was Benioff’s silent partner during Salesforce’s earliest days—interviewing senior executives, finding the company’s first office in San Francisco, and reviewing every homepage and marketing campaign. But Benioff only offers me one bland quote through his assistant: “Halsey was an early investor in Salesforce.com. We are grateful for his early support and guidance.” Asked to confirm Minor’s other statements, Benioff’s assistant says her boss is too busy to help.

A former CNET executive who worked closely with Minor says of him, “You won’t find a guy in the world who’s more charming when he wants to be, but like a lot of entrepreneurs, he’s not very empathetic. He has a difficult time comprehending how he’d be perceived from someone else’s perspective.”

I ask Minor why he is so often characterized as arrogant. “People take the fact that I’m passionate for being arrogant, because they look the same,” he says. “If I’m arrogant, I’m not going to listen to you, and if I’m passionate, I’m just going to believe differently. But I don’t really see myself as being an arrogant person. What does arrogant mean, that you think you’re better than someone else? No, that’s not me.”