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October 28, 2004
Media Watch: Lessons learned from dotcom dotbombs
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Halloween is the appropriate time to take the skeletons out of the closet. And, you don't have to be ashamed of those scary dot-com boom-era business plans either.
Even the most ludicrous failure offers lessons that may help prevent another business horror show.
That's the theory behind the Business Plan Archive, brainchild of David A. Kirsch, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, spotlighted in the Washington Post's "Digital Capital" column today in "U-Md. Professor Archives History Of Dot-Com Bombs" by Ellen McCarthy.
The BPA description of the project:
The Internet boom and bust of 1996 to 2002 was the most important business phenomenon of the past several decades. In the wake of this historic period, we have an unprecedented opportunity to learn from our past mistakes and successes. To help us learn from history, we are creating the Business Plan Archive (BPA) to collect business plans and related documents from the dot com era. These plans – the “blueprints” that lay out the assumptions and strategies of Internet entrepreneurs – will enable entrepreneurs and researchers to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research.
Kirsch and a student staff have collected 2,300 business plans so far, McCarthy reports.
McCarthy cherry-picks examples of the vapors that beguiled so many minds in the late 1990s panic to strike Web gold. This is a good one:
The intention of RevElution.Com was to "allow consumers (and businesses) to sell their purchasing loyalty" to the highest bidders in online auctions. At the end of an e-mail introducing the company, Reston-based RevElution.Com's founders included a quote that could sum up the philosophy of an era: "In a world filled with dogma, the future of business belongs to the heretics."
Then there was the dotcom that offered to arrange for individuals to sell their souls to Satan, but that's a story for another time.
Links:
U-Md. Professor Archives History Of Dot-Com Bombs by Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post, 28 October 2004
October 28, 2004 07:00 AM
