The dot.bomb survival guide

With more dot-coms going bust every day, new-economy entrepreneurs and managers are scrambling for detailed information on what went wrong with the losers and how they can emulate the winners. DotBomb gives them the answers with a close look at a number of notable dot-com failures, comparing their experiences with those of several prominent dot-com successes.

With the help of candid commentaries by staff members, venture capitalists, industry analysts, and market research, Sean Carton performs postmortems on Priceline, Living.com, PlanetRX, ValueAmerica, and other recent dot-com debacles and identifies the dot-pathologies that led to their demise. He also provides contrasting examples of successful companies that excel in that area, and he extracts powerful lessons on what managers can do to follow their examples.

Was the New Economy just a figment of our collective imaginations, and, if not, why have so many dot.coms failed so miserably?

What was it about some ebusinesses that made them the darlings of Wall Street while so many others lost money their first day out?

Why did some dot.coms become household names seemingly overnight through massive buzz, while others died silent deaths despite extravagant marketing expenditures?

What, exactly, went wrong with the losers, and what lessons can their examples teach us about emulating the winners?

In a book that is destined to become the bible of the next generation of Internet entrepreneurs, acclaimed Web entrepreneur and ebusiness journalist Sean Carton provides answers to these and other critical questions on every businessperson's and investor's mind about what it will take to succeed in the (new) New Economy.

In a lively, no-holds-barred narrative, Carton takes a close look at the Internet industry as a whole, separating the hype from the business realities. With the help of candid commentaries by former dot.com staff members, venture capitalists, and industry analysts, he performs detailed post-mortems on Priceline, Living.com, Pets.com, Go.com, and other notable dot.com debacles of the past 2 years. He identifies the dot.pathologies that led to their demise and offers expert advice on how to immunize virtually any online business against them. And throughout Dot.Bomb Carton further enlivens his coverage with dozens of too-good-to-be-true tales of nutty company cultures, bizarre hiring practices, and loony ideas that, thankfully, never made it out of the gate.

Each chapter of Dot.Bomb focuses on a different problem, or set of related problems, such as bad business models, a failure to identify customers, poor product development, wrong-headed marketing concepts, and overcapitalization. For each problem identified, Carton compares the experiences of dot.com failures with those of several prominent dot.com successes who excel in that area. And, in each case, he extracts powerful lessons on what managers can do to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to emulate the examples set by the dot.com victors.

If Dot.Bomb can be said to contain one overriding message, it is that yes, ebusiness is here to stay, but if it is to survive, the next generation of dot.coms must be built on a rock-solid foundation of business fundamentals, concentrating on the needs of their customers, not grand, pie-in-the-sky promises, get-rich-quick schemes, and unworkable business models.

While the Internet industry went on a 5-year bender, regular folks had their own lives to lead, their own priorities, their own friends to talk to. People didn't love the Net because it let them shop in their underwear. They loved the Net because it let them talk to other people, gave them a voice, and let them do their own thing in a public space that had never before existed. The Internet attracted people not because they got horny from the technology but because they could connect. Why did so many [dot.coms] fail? How could so many have missed the obvious? How could so many (seemingly) smart people be so wrong? Were we all just insanely stupid? Was the New Economy simply the biggest scam in history?... The book you're holding in your hands just might have the answers to these questions.

—from the foreword by Chris Locke, author of The Cluetrain Manifesto

Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. Lies, Damn Lies, and Business Models
2. The Customer? What Customer?
3. Fashion Victims and Supermodels: Push, the First Big Web Fad
4. The Perils (and Promises) of Software Products and Services Sold Over the Internet
5. Burnout: Short-Term Thinking = Short-Term Companies
6. Hype Bites Back: Marketing Disasters...and Success Stories
7. The Road to Hell Is Advertising Supported
8. Funding the Dream
9. Are We Learning Anything Yet?