More Lessons From Dead Dot Coms
from the all-the-wrong-lessons dept
Ed writes “There’s yet another Lessons Learned from a Dead Dot-com article in Sunday’s San Jose Mercury News. What makes it slightly more interesting than the dozens of similar stories is that some the supposed lessons that the CEO learned from his dot-com’s death seem pretty superficial at best, and misguided and incorrect at worst. (1) Don’t use venture capital as a replacement for revenues — No argument there, unless you’re running a Ponzi scheme instead of a business. (2) Overnight results required — No! That’s what the CEO supposedly learned because investors have finally started paying attention to revenue. He was put in the position of trying to find some revenue overnight because his current model gave away everything for free and the money was running out, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a reasonable amount of time to develop a product, technology, or service until it becomes profitable. (3) You need a technology advantage in most cases — No, what you need is a sufficient barrier to entry that will prevent a dozen other startups with equal or better funding from taking away your market. That doesn’t have to be technology — consider VHS and Beta. (4) Find a way to build a business with adoption at a realistic pace. — Finally, a lesson that makes some sense. Perhaps there’s some hope after all.”
