Remember the dot bomb?
 

Remember the huge amounts of venture capital, the huge spending accounts and the huge gaps in the market once all the dots bombed?

Wonder if today you couldn't be able to attract the same amount of venture capital. I mean, after all, look at this industry. Many are very successful media buyers, if you know what you're doing and attract the right amount, who's to say you wouldn't get really huge, in terms of revenue, in either adult or mainstream? The online business has matured a lot since those days, as have the consumers. I think the only thing keeps those investments from happening are the (still) sore asses of the ones who bombed the first time around. Other than that, lots of ripe fruit around.

apparentely, some (gullible) venture capitalists are putting money into any business plan with "Web 2.0" in the title

it's not about the product. It's not about the website. It's about the marketing. Good marketers can sell anything. The only one's who "bombed" were the one's who didn't have a clue how to market. They thought their product would simply sell itself.

back in the day sites werent making money
different story today
not compareable

Rent the movie "Startup dot com"

Google.
that stock is not worth anything near what people have inflated it to.
just a matter of time.

not strictly true. with start ups you don't know if they're going to make money. and all this web 2.0 bullshit feels like another bubble to me

for example - how much money has techhttp://www.comnorati actually made?

how weird - tech no rati is a banned word

One of the problems in the day of the bubble, was that the companies were getting the money invested, and they were just paying themselves big wages, and doing very little work. Buying the best of the best computers, and traveling, but not trying to sell anything.

Not really... back in the day, sites were getting investors. Promises of paradise and glory. Then those sites hired a development firm to build their product, then parted ways with the development firm and hired one tons and tons of marketing/sales people and figured that would be all they needed.

And IT company with no IT people... doomed to fail.

I think it's more due to the fact that there was no ROI tracking in place for advertising/marketing

a superbowl ad for pets.com - what the fuck were they thinking?

oh yeah.. totally. They were smart talkers and new thinkers... they could pitch a deal to any millionaire and get a nice chunk of change to spend as they pleased.

They didn't know a thing about the internet or how it worked, but they could sure make a good sales pitch.

Yeah, I remember the dot com bomb. I was living in the Bay Area, right smack in the middle of the Silicon Valley. When I entered college (at a late age) you could come out of two years of school with an AA degree and get a job making $70k right out of the gate working in some IT department.

What I saw amazed me - kids fresh out of high school getting tens of millions of dollars because they had an "idea for a website"; Everyone was hoping to find the next Yahoo. I'll never forget it - there was a handful of sites that were being pushed on TV really hard, and I failed to see how they were making money.

When they discovered they weren't make money, they pulled back the funding, closed up shop, and suddenly the market was flooded with unemployed computer geeks.

This is how I ended up in Porn.

ROI tracking for WHAT? Very few of the start-ups back then even had a clear business plan or any worthwhile marketing research done to back it up with. People knew NOTHING about how Internet would evolve and everyone rushed to shape it the way they wanted it to be. In doing so many, executors and investors alike, neglected one big factor: THE NEED OF THE MARKET. That happened, of course, largely due to the fact that the market wasn't clearly distinguishable. Nevertheless, a marketing study never hurt anyone and investors were many a time blinded by the "promised land" of huge profits and overlooked such "minor" details. I have a feeling that was the last time they did it though. :)

Got bombed on 2 stocks, 100,000 shares of one company, and 300,000 shares of another that went south.

You win some, you lose some. The stock market is a game like everything else in business. You can lose a mil as fast as you can make a mil. :disgust

Haha, funny you should mention that. Had a friend back then working in the Silicon Valley. At one time we had a longer conversation over a few beers and he goes: "You know how every waiter and waitress in Hollywood is an aspiring actor? In Silicon Valley they're aspiring Unix gurus!" I thought I'd shit myself laughing. :1orglaugh