Our book:
Defensive Design for the Web: How To Improve Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Crisis Points
Available Now ($16.99)
Most Popular (last 15 days)
Looking for old posts?
37signals Mailing List
37signals Services
Syndicate
Where's The Beef?
07 Aug 2003 by
Bootstrapping the Net revolution
Now that Internet hype and disaster have long since faded from the headlines, its interesting to watch the pattern of businesses making a play for the Web. You probably wont see it on the cover of Fortune or Business 2.0, but theres a surprisingly consistent profile of small businesses that are quietly picking up the pieces of the dot-com wreck.
I’ve been waiting for mainstream media to pick up on this. But… Why no mention of a single company in the article? Not a name, not a link, not a description of what they do or who they serve, not a quote about why they’ve chosen to bootstrap, nothing. I want to know more about what makes the small companies tick, what keeps them going, their secrets to success. But, instead, I run into a dead-end. This article reads like the dot-com-bomb devoid of substance fluff he’s railing against.
11 comments so far (Post a Comment)
07 Aug 2003 | Iolaire McFadden said...
Ventureblog also picked this up, if you want to read more on this.
07 Aug 2003 | Anil said...
Amen! The omission of all company names and links is a glaring oversight.
07 Aug 2003 | HP said...
Hi,
I read this article on BusinessWeek.com yesterday and came away with the same conclusion. Basically, the article is short on examples that would substantiate the claim it makes.
I was hoping for more as I am bootstrapping a Web-centered technology company myself and some insights from others in similar position would have been welcome.
Oh well....
07 Aug 2003 | Don Schenck said...
Looks like someone wanted to write an article without doing any research.
07 Aug 2003 | HP said...
On the other hand, it could be that the title of the article and the topic of it are not meant to be the same thing. By reading the title, it appears as if it si about new small companies that are going after the same or similar markets that big .com flops did but now they are being smarter and more cautious.
However, the article itself does not seem to be focusing on this but rather on companines that just embraced technology with more enthusiasm to improve their business taking advantage of lower prices and availability of talent. All of this is perfectly fine, of course, but not exactly the same thing as what the article title implies.
07 Aug 2003 | pb said...
One of the best ideas, well executed: CafePress.
07 Aug 2003 | fajalar said...
The omission of names and links could be an editorial decision, as opposed to an author mistake (albiet a strange decision).
The mag I work on pulls out similar things from articles so as not to appear "pro-company X." Granted, there's a big difference between not-for-profit and for-profit publishing.
08 Aug 2003 | p8 said...
Totally off-topic but just had to post it:
George W. Bush - U.S. President and Naval Aviator - 12" Action Figure
08 Aug 2003 | Don the Mechanic said...
Under orders from McDonalds the beef isn't allowed to have facts in it any more ;)
03 Jan 2004 | casino said...
Very informed and interesting comments! Greetings from Hadealer team
05 Jan 2004 | casino said...
Excellent site I have bookmarked your site and I will come back soon!
