|
Dot.com
flameouts don't make the news much anymore. Most of the heavies
have already made or are in the midst of making their exits.
Another one bites the dust? Yawn.
Unfortunately,
just as the stampede to fund dot.coms created monsters that
are now dying slow, agonizing and very public deaths, other
companies that saw the Internet as something more than a cash
cow are being caught in the crossfire.
While
ideological Internet entrepreneurs may be rare, they do exist.
They are people who wanted to use the Internet to make the world
a better place, to reduce waste, to increase personal time.
They were not in the game to make a pot load of IPO money, nor
were they out to have a ride on someone else's dime.
Unfortunately,
thanks to the greedy, self-centered and money-grubbing companies
that felt money was the bottom line, the Internet companies
fighting the good fight are going down for the count.
While
many folks might think that whether one dot.com or another goes
under doesn't really matter, it sadly does.
Pyra
is one example of this. Their tool, Blogger
, unleashed 100,000 publishers/writers/diarists. Ever since
the Internet started making its mark on the mainstream consciousness,
people have been talking about how it empowers the individual.
Unfortunately, that dream has never been fully realized. Several
barriers to entry, however small, have prevented ordinary people
from expressing themselves. HTML coding, FTP hazards, Web -space
problems, etc., prevented many people from getting into the
Internet publishing game.
Pyra,
along with a few other companies, removed several barriers and
truly empowered the individual. This is but one small example
of a good tool and good company going out of business because
of someone else's problems and someone else's mess.
Talk
about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
As
can be expected, the folks who did the initial investing in
any old dot.com that came down the pike were too stupid (or
scared) to separate the good from the bad. Now that the tables
have turned, these same stupid (or scared) people can't separate
the bad from the good.
This,
of course, follows the rule that the people most qualified to
rule a country are cutting hair and driving cabs. Right now,
the people most qualified to fund Internet companies with a
good chance of success are writing for successful e-zines.
The
frenzied run from anything with a dot.com in its business plan
does, however, present a wonderful opportunity for someone with
money. They can easily make a killing by funding a dot.com with
a good business plan but stupid (or scared) investors.
Anybody
out there got a million they can give me? I'll put it to good
use.
Copyright
© 2001 Stephen Van Esch. All Rights Reserved.
Stephen Van Esch is a writer and instructional designer living
near Toronto, Canada. He is the owner and CEO of the Text
Pound (http://www.textpound.com) and runs a Weblog called
BlindEye (http://www.blindeye.net).
|
