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| Talk,
Graham Bower,
18 January 1999 | |
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Things move so quickly on the Internet. Some times the dot in "dotcom" moves so fast it could almost leap up and hit you on the head. Take boo.com. Do you remember them? No, nor do I. I also can’t remember the last time a heard a good word said about any Dotcom venture. Indeed, the term Dotcom itself has turned into something of a dirty word. I read an ad from a recruitment consultant the other day who proudly boasted " we don’t deal with the dotcoms, only established, reputable companies," as if the two descriptions are mutually exclusive. It’s not clear whether that means they would turn down the likes for Amazon.com or Yahoo!.
But Dotcom-bashing is very much in vogue these days. It’s as if all the jerks who lept on the bandwagon making naïve statements about how the Internet would enable everyone to become rich by selling their second-hand slippers on eBay have found a new, equally naïve bandwagon to leap on instead.
Two similar, and yet very different web sites have caught my eye in the last couple of weeks – "fuckedcompany.com" and "startupfailures.com". The former, which dubs itself "the dotcom deadpool" gives visitors the chance to bet on which Internet ventures they expect to bite the dust. It features inside information on redundancies and boardroom blood-baths, and generally makes for depressing reading. There’s a zeitgeisty wit to the gallows humour, but the smart assed attitude from many readers on the Fuckedcompany message board is quite unappealing. There are certainly more Internet startups who succeeded in getting funding in the heady early days, and are now set for a fall, and it’s quite easy now to point a finger and laugh. It would be interesting to know if some of the site’s players who are so talented at spotting the shit companies are equally skilled in finding the Shinola.
Startupfailures.com covers the same ground as Fuckedcompany, but from an entirely different angle. Here, failed entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to lick their wounds and compare battle stories. Startupfailures.com, by some quirk of fate uses, Coolboard, the same message board system as Fuckedcompany.com, and the naïve optimism of some of the site's readers is lamentable. The site’s founder, Nicholas Hall, said in a recent interview with WIRED magazine, " when I closed out my last startup, it took me maybe an hour to bounce back," but where exactly was he bouncing back to? You wonder how some of them ever got to first round funding. Many readers of startupfailures.com seem determined to try, try, try again, despite heckling from the naysaying sidelines.
My 2 top tips if you’re looking for a Dotcom to bash:
Watch out for the ones that are clearly dresssing up a consumer oriented offering as Business to Business because they’ve heard that’s what the Venture Capitalists want to hear.
Any company that claims "community" is right at the heart of their business model, when in fact it’s just a buzz word they’ve picked up on and they think a Coolboard Message Board will do the job nicely!
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