Being A Dot Com Isn't So Bad After All

from the especially-when-the-writer-owns-you dept

Bill Gurley's latest column is a thinly veiled attempt at hyping up a lot of his own investments - but still makes some valid points. The central idea is that, don't look now, but plenty of consumer-focused dot coms are actually doing well. I think "doing well" might be a bit of an exaggeration, but they are holding their own - which is more than many people expected. He names the big name successes that everyone talks about (Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Google), and then throws in a few more public companies we all know about who appear to have rebounded from earlier troubles. Then, he suddenly goes through his entire investment portfolio - which I would take with a grain of salt. However, his reasoning does make sense. The basic ideas of these companies was never bad - there were just too many consumer-focused dot coms, who mostly executed terribly. Very few were focused on real business fundamentals, and it took some time for that mentality to shake out. There is still plenty of opportunity, though, in the consumer "dot com" world. I agree. I just think his argument would have been much stronger if it didn't look like he was trying to prop up his own investments.

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