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Boo hoo dot com

Tony Westbrook AnchorDesk

Published: 19 May 2000 15:58 BST

Predictably it then ran out of money, and couldn't persuade anyone to part with any more. This is quite aside from the question of whether it represented a viable business model.

The event makes a recent report for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) look especially astute. PWC's study released on Wednesday suggests that up to one in four internet start-ups floated on the UK Stock Exchange could fail to make the grade within six months because of a lack of funds. Six months ago, extra money would have been forthcoming because investors would have seen the momentum of ever-upward share prices as enough of a draw. Today the stock market 'adjustment' has stopped all that dead.

You don't need to look any further than the pages of the Sunday Times to see why high profile launches like this were bound to come under huge pressure when the hysteria wore off and analysis of the balance sheets and business plan took over. Turn to the recruitment pages: In a desperate attempt to win over incumbent staff to new internet start-ups, people are being offered mad salaries to move.

Obviously highly attractive, but maybe less so if the job only lasts six months. Then turn to the lifestyle section and you'll see large and highly expensive ads for various internet companies you've never heard of and aren't quite sure what they do. They are just trying to get you to type in their URL, and make sure their shareholders think they still exist...

And how cruel that Rupert Murdoch should be getting rich on the dot com revolution even though he was the last to realise it was happening.

The other issue highlighted by the boo.com demise is one that is close to any ZDNet reader's heart. Technology. Technical problems resulted in a late launch and the discovery that the site was too demanding on a large number of potential customer's PCs. Understanding the platform a software product is going to run on, and the time required to launch it are both core issues to successful software development. Maybe if you are Microsoft and have a sufficiently tight grip on a market you can get away with failing to deliver on either (or both), but a start-up cannot.

Read on...