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.Com Millionaires: Where are they now?
Sivar writes "They came pitching gee-whiz business plans and painting visions of integrated platforms, enabling technologies, and wizardry beyond compare. They created billions in wealth that seemed built on--and that all too often evaporated into--thin air. More than thirty former .com millionaires, what they were, and what they are now are on Fortune.com. One on sabbatical, one awaiting a prison sentence, there are some interesting transitions some have had."
Would you like some McDonaldland cookies with that?
Does anybody else find it disturbing that not only did they (FBI) let a pedophile off the hook but they also let him design their system for catching pedophiles. Not only is he free to rape children, but because he designed the system he knows how to avoid detction also. Great job FBI I feel really safe knowing you're there to protect my children.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
For anyone familiar with Internet before the dot-com stampede, it seemed a little odd that new companies were spending fortunes creating television commercials that rivaled long standing successful companies like Pepsi and Budweiser. The Internet companies that were (and remain) successful got there by word-of-mouth - on the Internet, for people savvy enough to be on the Internet. Companies like Yahoo and Amazon didn't branch into television ads until they had a strong foothold. Companies like Id software, still don't advertise (or very little) on TV, they don't need to. The e-Toys commercials were amazing, and when I first saw them I thought 'How can they do that? They must have spent a fortune on that.' Then there was the Super Bowl that was blanketed with dot-com advertising, the most expensive of ads. Years later now we know. They set up shop in cyber space, then marketed to brick and mortar consumers. They created an imaginary business model built on speculation and pipe dreams. Investors lost fortunes. They only legacy they left was a recipe for a fool-hardy business plan that we can learn NOT to follow.
Dot-commers were always a diverse group, from the founders down to the mailroom these companies tended to attract folks with a wide range of interests & capabilities. That's one of the things that I found fun about working for a startup & one of the things I found scary about working for a startup.
Is it any surprise that these same folks have movd on to varied new vocations & avocations?
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
..the answer is simple.
Most of the money went in salaries and advertising.
Salaries generally form a company's largest expense, other than stock, and most of these Internet companies had no stock (consultancies, design agencies, etc) or were drop shipping.
Dot com companies were also keen on advertising, so a lot of money went into the new media magazines of the time.. but even then, the money ended up in the pockets of the writers and editors.. so, really, it all went in salaries.
A lot of people were employed to do almost nothing during the dot com boom. This means that they added little to production, yet took a paycheck every month. That's where the money was 'wasted' and why we can see no remnant of it today.. effectively the wealth was used to buy a few years' 'free time' for a group of lazy bastards.
Nowadays the market is not so great, but is much more realistic. People who are productive earn their money, people who aren't don't.
mogorific carpentry experiments
he people selling real products to the .com companies got rich
.COMs and then didn't get their money when suddenly all these .COMs went bankrupt one after another at more or less the same time.
.COM companies are now firing staff by the thousands.
.COM clients were gone.
Not quite, they just became part of the bubble. A number of these suppliers are now struggling because they...
1.) delivered expensive products to
(Also don't forget that many hardware products have a small profit margin despite being expensive, so that the manufacturer gets some profit when being paid, but loses a lot more when not being paid.)
2.) had to grow to follow the bubble - these companies increased staff, production output, products stocked in their warehouses etc. and now are too large for the remaining market after the burst.
That's one major reason why Telecom suppliers, server manufacturers, consulting firms and other suppliers to
3.) and both 1 and 2 lead to a loss of stock value of those companies that are listed at the stock market, which can also create a shortage of cash and kill a company even if it was quite able to survive after 1 and 2. But the psychology of the stock market is completely different issue.
So to sum up, everyone who did well because of the internet bubble is having problems now. Quite a few of those companies were also going belly-up because they suddenly were too big after their
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You may like my a cappella music
Oh goodie, I see Fortune included that scumbag Marc Colon-Wrecker in their list. The former head of Digital Entertainment Network, Colon-Wrecker is currently awaiting extradition from Spain for transporting a minor across state lines with the intent of engaging in sex. There's a great Flash movie done in the South Park style that dramatizes the DEN story quite nicely.
Just don't play it at work, unless you work in a porn shop.
Wouldn't it be more like:
Customers leveraging the SuperSize platform will have the ability to seamlessly integrate real-time product expansion into their enterprise hunger environment. Architected to provide tighter integration and deeper collaboration, the SuperSize Solution will enable global customers to recognize greater results from collaboration, streamline efficiencies in the supply chain, and reduce costs.
I was one of those "bright entrepreneurs" who built an online business (7am.com)with great traffic and an even better future.
Unlike so many of the flash-in-the-pan wondersites that no longer exist, it wasn't built on millions of dollars in VC funding and didn't have large offices filled with geeks on scooters or a carpark filled with Porsches and BMWs.
Started in 1997, it was very much a "one-man band" for two years, during which time it grew from a good idea into one of the most widely syndicated web-based news services on the Net.
Getting it from zero to two million hits a day by 1999 meant working 18-19 hours per day, every day for two straight years and living on the smell of an oily rag.
Suffice to say that I recall quite vividly the day my eardrum burst while I was typing up a breaking news story. I'd gotten an inner ear infection but was too busy to go to the doctor.
I should also point out that 7am.com didn't have the benefit of being US-based. Instead, it was located in rural New Zealand -- half a world away from its target marketplace.
This meant that my workday started at around 11pm and finished at 6pm-7pm the next day.
It also meant that I had to use sweat-equity and innovation to replace a large workforce and lots of capital. 7am.com was a real groundbreaker in the area of syndicated news content on the Web and to this day continues to deliver content through a network of over 200,000 websites.
In 1999 I was approached by a group of local (NZ) "suits" who wanted to buy in and take 7am.com to the NASDAQ.
Remember that by this time the webserver was tracking over 2 million hits per day, the syndication network was about 125,000 third-party websites in size, I had regular advertisers, and Nielsens/NetRatings had rated 7am.com as being more popular than news.bbc.co.uk, CNNfn, Playboy.com and a raft of others.
So, at the peak of the dot-com boom, what would you pay for a site with these respectible figures?
Unfortunately I didn't have a whole lot of other suitors banging down my door and I knew that in order to maintain or improve my position in the market I had to pour more capital into the operation -- so beggars can't be choosers. (The lack of other investors was/is a sad indictment on the state of the VC industry in New Zealand).
I ended up accepting a figure that was (in US$ terms) just in the six-figure bracket.
After paying back the money I'd borrowed to start up the business, some tax, and catching up on the mortgage I was left with just over $10,000 in cash.
I was also left with 34% of the company but I was promised that that I could now slow down my own pace of work, take weekends off and maybe even enjoy a vacation.
Most importantly to me was the promise that the investors would bring skilled business management to the enterprise.
Now I'm the first person to put up my hand and admit that I'm not, and don't aspire to be, a great business manager. I'm an "ideas guy" and I'm also quite competent at marketing -- but crunching numbers and brokering multi-million dollar deals just doesn't spin my wheels I'm afraid.
So here I was -- my bills were up to date, I had a few thousand in my back pocket, I had 34% of (at the time) the world's most widely syndicated web-based news service, and the future looked rosey!
What's more, an independent valuation of the business (made in 1999/2000) suggested that it was worth at least US$40 million
Unfortunately I soon learned that the promises of the new investors were pretty hollow and that they figured they knew the online news business better than me -- despite the fact that none of them had any experience in this field whatsoever.
I was working harder than ever and while everyone else was partying, I had to do 36-hours straight during the millennium eve/day celebrations so as to provide the site with around-the-clock coverage. That promised vacation never eventuated either.
I also gave up trying to provide input and direction because what had been a dynamic, exciting, innovative operation with ultra-low overheads became just another corporate monolith.
By mid-2000 I resigned my positions as director, board-member and news director -- it was simply too frustrating.
To cut a long story short -- I still have a 34% interest in 7am.com, the company continues to trade and remains a significant player in the syndicated news-content market -- but I've never seen another penny.
This annoys the snot out of me because I have since had a number of
good ideas but can't afford to fund them.
So, if anyone wants to buy my 34% of 7am.com for a song -- just drop me a line and we'll talk. I've got better things to do with the money than leave it tied up in a large, slow-moving corporate beast.