[uk-netmarketing] RE: fall of the dotcoms?

[Ben Thompson]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 09:24:52AM -0000, tim parkin wrote:

[snip]

>The first

> rumour sets off another rumour which sets of a worry about stability which

> decreases funding.


Worse then that, I'm seeing and hearing of a large number of case where

finance is pulled halfway (or later) through development. In most of these

cases nothing has changed, development and design are on time and within

budget but an article or news story appears somewhere and all of a sudden

the backer gets cold feet and pulls out.


For reference, two recent examples I've heard of (ones ours, the others a

friends)


1) A portal (no names) starts a project but halfway through stops returning

calls. Turns out their IPO's failed, and the budget for this project was

from that IPO cash (strange how that was not mentioned when the money

question was asked prior to commencing work).

(As an aside about three months later (and while the project managers away

on holiday), said portal goes direct to the freelance developer and tries to

resurrect the project on the cheap).


2) More recent and far more serious. A four month project (half windows,

half web side) for a start-up. Project is needed in a hurry so schedules are

manipulated to achieve the ten week deadline. Last Friday (five weeks into

the project) the developers receive a call from the MD of the start-up, its

the usually awfully sorry blah blah, backers pulled out blah, blah, moneys

all been spent sorry conversation.


Anyway, knowing the backer of the company I gave him a call on Monday. Turns

out he cancelled the next stage of finance on January 9th due to problems

elsewhere. The MD knowing this spends two weeks looking for someone else to

back the company but doesn't bother to tell either the developers or the

designers what had happened. End result is a lot of work wasted and both the

developers and the designers on the project with fairly serious cash flow

problems.


Sadly, I'm hearing about three or four of these examples a week at the

moment. All of them are from sensible sane firms who watch the cash and

carefully check prospective clients yet they still end up in this mess.


Meanwhile, I'm now looking for a new freelance(ish) sales person down in

London (contacts within London agencies a big help) and have access to three

techie (perl, unix, database stuff) web developers with a five week (at

least) gap in their schedules who need a hand. If you can be of any help

please contact me.



Ben


--

Ben Thompson

babyhippo.com


t: 44 191 230 1213

m: 44 07976 768221