Stop the DotCom Madness

by Richard Steere
June, 2004

For every successful Internet business that survived the dotcom crash the streets are littered with the worthless options and dreams of thousands of entreprenuers and the people who helped them come and go. What went wrong and what lessons can be learned for those hoping to climb back on the rebounding climate for Internet businesses, smart-client business solutions, web services and outsourcing?

From the Bivings report, May 6, 2004

Online ad spending is on the rise and inventories are growing tighter. Click-through rates on online ads are improving. At-home and at-work broadband connections continue to proliferate, and rich media ads are becoming more complex and effective. Even highly hyped IPOs are back in the news with Google’s foray into the world of publicly traded companies. The excitement is once again palpable, from publishers to advertisers to the general public. Is the Internet boom back, and if so, should we be ebullient or filled with trepidation?

It would be very hard to argue that the upturn is not welcome – after such a prolonged funk everyone is excited to see this sector of the economy spring back to life. So far, the tenor is appropriately positive but restrained. The fear is that we will once again return to the days of “irrational exuberance,” which cost so many people so much money. I would like to think that the lessons of the late 1990’s could not be forgotten so quickly, but history has proved time and again that collective memories can be frightfully short.

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As a microcosm of the internet boom, the Bay area was the hub of activity from start-ups to eCommerce spin-offs of brick and mortars to hopeless pretenders. Lofts and warehouses were converted and wired to support the armies of designers, developers and business analysts depnding on thier founders luck on the VC merry-go-round. I visited a company a couple months ago in one of these buildings and found them to be the only company still in operation there, with the other spaces sitting empty behind large glass walls, where you could still see the imprints of the furniture that was hastily removed. Obviously rents had not dropped enough to attract new tenants or these spaces were still someone's responsibility. All in all, a very sad sight.

Now let's go back to when this building like others accross the country were hives of activity and creativity. What did all these companies have in common? An Internet presence and software that was typically custom built to meet the vision of the founders or direction of the VCs. Which meant that every company was doing web development, wether they had experience or not in an attempt to make their unique idea a success online. So, in every one of these loft suites and warehouse spaces, there were developers writing code to do things like user registration, content searching, eCommerce catalogs and payments, profile management, and well, you get the idea. Rather than focusing on their business idea and actually getting customers, these firms were working around the clock trying to figure why a database insert doesn't work on their user registration page. If one could ever calculate the amount of hours that were spent on redundant tasks across all these companies and the dollars wasted, it would be astronomical.

Where are we going with all this? Well, what if you could focus on your business or start-up venture without having to worry about all the software requirements that distract you from meeting your objectives. This is where Applomatic comes in.. making eBusiness automatic.

We've created a software factory concept that can build your solutions for less than you would spend on offshore development in the even the lowest cost bamboo hut. By leveraging our Appomatic Framework, Acceleartors and Process, we can deliver your thin-client solution in record time, while providing a highly reliable, highly scalable and high performing solution for less than you would spend on licensing package solutions, thereby delivering true custom requirements without the high price tag and all the communication challenges. In fact, we are so confident in our Approach, that we even provide solutions for free in some instances.