Re: <nettime> from the dotcom observatory

[anya@jihad.to (Anya Sophe Behn)]

geert wrote:

> A New Report from the Dotcom Obervatory.
 
[....]

> excitement the reader finds a deep sense of inevitability. I am hesitant to
> say fatality because that would be too beautiful of an ending. The
> dotcommers are still baffled. Everything seemed right. They all got
> overwhelmed by a crisis without cause, with hardly anyone to blame. Lawyers

In my experienced (10 years) view, the reason that dotcommers are still 
baffled is that it is pure dumb luck if the startup was successful or not.

Example: many of the netscapers went to other startups because they
thought, "Hey, we have the magic touch" (as everyone else thought as well...
hiring magic lucky charms was very popular then) but nearly all of them
failed.
Most frequently massive misuse of money and no customers caused this
(We have to hire 100 people in the next two months!...the ramp-up lie),
but it is also being in the right time, right place, with the right 
connections.
Dumb luck.

Most people think it was their talents.  Because the alternative is
horrifyingly unfair.  The ones who don't think it was their talent that
made them successful, who made lots of money, have huge issues about 
deserving the money they made--I know one
person who felt so guilty that he *gave* 2 million dollars to the girl he
was dating....and she immediately broke up with him, of course.

This is not to say that having a group of smart people in your startup
wasn't important--it was, but I can count hundreds of startups that were
just "smart" experienced people that failed just the same.

Dumb Luck.

However, I don't think life is a lottery; just the baby stages of an 
industry are, which is what the internet/software industry was.
(The closest industry analogy is Hollywood--"being discovered".)
 

best,
-a-

> 1. Review of David Kuo, Dot.Bomb (Martha Liebrum)
> 2. Review of Paternot, A Very Public Offering (Katharine Mieszkowski)
> 3. Review of Ernst Malmsten (and others), Boo Hoo (from the amazon.co.uk
> site)
> 4. Review of Boo Hoo by BBC News Online's Emma Clark
> 5. The Carpetbaggers Go Home by Cory Doctorow
> 6. D I T H E R A T I : SOMEBODY'S BUSINESS PLAN NEEDS A HUG
> 7. FAST TALK DALLAS: Smarter Moves for Tougher Times
> 
> ---

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