getting rid of the baby with the bathwater >> by stephen van esch >> *spark-online issue nineteen

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.

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).