RE: UKNM: Dot Com Fever

[Robin Edwards]

I think this will be a thread that runs for a while...


Personally I was pleased that the programme was fairly impartial, and even

asked the right questions every now and then, given the opportunity to tar

us all with the same brush that must have been tempting the programme

makers from the very moment they came up with the idea.


Do Clickmango.com seriously think that profitability in 5 years is likely?

It is fine to plan for that on the grounds that you have no competition. A

lot can happen in 5 years (c.f. Amazon.com), and I wouldn't be surprised if

a market leading bricks 'n' mortar company decides in a few months time

that it would like to own that market online as well, and there goes the

first mover advantage. Hell, given my background I could even give it a

shot myself :o)


The young guys were hilarious, and I seriously feel sorry for any VCs today

- they will be inundated even more than they currently are! Did they

actually get any funding? I was playing tetris at the time and only half

heard their celebratory speech at the end.


I think we will start to see a mirror of the US situation whereby people

are playing down the dot-com name to avoid being seen as a company that has

no facility for making a profit in its business plan. A lot of private

investors will have had their fingers gently warmed by the Lastminute.com

scenario, and will be wary of sending off 500 quid again in case they do

get 500 quid's "worth" of shares next time around. No problem for

Lastminute.com though (hi Brent) as they raised the necessary spending

funds at the time of flotation, so the share price dip is probably just an

irritation rather than a signal to line up at the cliffs of Dover for a

mass ropeless bungie jump.


Overall though the program was a bit short on real content, and I would

love to see a fully researched and in-depth view that was low on

sensationalism, but obviously that doesn't make for great TV. I'd like to

see a poker game between some of the paper-rich "youngsters" and Posh 'n'

Becks. Wouldn't last very long would it?


Hey, great PR for those companies involved in the prog though!


Robin


--

Robin Edwards

Clockworx

T: +44 1543 252370           F: +44 1543 420761

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robinclockworx [dot] co [dot] uk

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On Tuesday, April 04, 2000 10:36 AM, Glen Collins

[SMTP:

glendigital-outlook [dot] com

] wrote:

> What did we all think of the programme then?

>

> I particularly liked the 3 chaps who were looking for ?0.5m funding for a

> mainstream, b2c & b2b renting & selling property web service, who stated

in

> a presentation to a VC that the ?0.5m seed financing would fund all the

> online and offline marketing / development.


[Sam says: msg chopped...]



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