E-hatchery, the internet incubator in Atlanta, has recently taken a fall. Its woes include:
1. only retaining 3 ventures:

1. simplycollectible.com shut down:
   

2. executives are leaving to start their own venture:
   

3. ehatchery is outsourcing its technology division and offering existing programmers the “opportunity” to join a large corporation:
   :
   

And to top this off… Jeff Levy the founder is vacationing…

As investors wait for Idealab’s IPO, Bill Gross has quietly increased its stake in a couple of its private companies.

Idealab is making these investments because it must own more than 25% of as many of its companies in order to be considered as an operating company rather than a mutual fund in the eyes of Uncle Sam.

The second reason Idealab is making these investments, is to prevent its companies that are desperate for cash from raising money at a lower valuation than what Idealab invested. That would create a loss and with Idealab’s upcoming IPO would not look too favorable in the investment world; especially since the majority of its investments are in B2C companies.

InsWeb was early to sign major insurance carriers along with great consumer interest. However the company didn’t consider nor plan nor facilitate the change management part. It turns out that the site would generate so many leads that would often go unanswered by the insurance brokers. Insurance brokers were often not computer savvy and still preferred the face to face channel.

Ted Briscoe who joined Ask Jeeves as the chief marketing officer in January 1999 and rose quickly through the ranks to become its president and chief operating officer is leaving Ask Jeeves. Apparently he didn’t want any more answers. While Ask Jeeves has attempted to alter its income by providing natural language search capabilities to companies like Chrysler and Nike, they need other streams of revenue. Expect more of the same…

Apparently the answer to the question is not much in the case of Quepasa.com. With the merger of Terra and Lycos, Quepasa.com is looking for a buyer. While Quepasa.com was an innovator by catering to the Latino community early on, they are not able to withstand the Goliath.

GM (General Motors) recently sent a mandate to its dealers. The mandate stated that the dealers should avoid third party sellers of vehicles such as Carorder.com and Carsdirect.com.

This is a sad attempt at two dot coms trying to stay alive… in this case I don’t think that a merger would help either of the companies.

Both DrugEmporium.com and drkoop.com have been losing money, and their respective parent companies each have hired advisers to devise strategies to improve their performances.

Ford (the American Car Manufacturer) has launched a campaign to sell cars directly to consumers via the web in Canada. This was launched shortly after VW decided to sell cars somewhat directly via the web and its dealers.

VW (Volkswagon) recently decided (with dealer approval) to sell two special editions of its Beetle. This is very interesting since both the pure plays (Carsdirect.com etc.) and the Manufacturers have been trying to avoid the dealership channel but have been stopped in their tracks by grandfather clause type laws.

These laws state that vehicles must be sold through dealerships. VW must have planned very well to have the buy in of its participating dealerships… Stay tuned for other manufacturers to launch a similar campaign.

ETrade purchased a network consisting of over 8800 ATM(automated teller machines). This has huge potential and may increase its usage and member base. It is a nice example of an ecommerce company taking advantage of an already established form of technology and extending it.