Dotcom crash was 10 years ago

A decade ago, the NASDAQ plunged mark­ing the end of the dot­com era. Last week, the Times of Lon­don asked me to help them with a first per­son view of the era. Here’s what I sub­mit­ted, a quick shot sent from my hos­pi­tal bed (I’m cur­rently deal­ing with a bad case of ulcer­a­tive col­i­tis, a man­age­able disease):

“You’re not being ambi­tious enough.”

I was sit­ting across from a well-known VC, pre­sent­ing a new dot­com startup in the con­tent syn­di­ca­tion arena with a plan to make US$100 mil­lion in yearly rev­enue by its fifth year. There was only one hitch: the date was Febu­rary 2000 and, as my VC puts it, “if it doesn’t say bil­lions, we can’t take you public.”

The dot­com eupho­ria was in full swing and, for some of us, an uneasy feel­ing that we might have to pay the piper sooner or later was start­ing to take hold. But the mar­kets kept prov­ing us wrong. The NASDAQ kept hit­ting new highs, new record-breaking IPOs showed up every­day and every­one wanted to be in the inter­net industry.

With money being essen­tially free, Dot­coms were not offer­ing a job but a lifestyle, look­ing to attract the best tal­ent. We out­fit­ted offices that were part office, part club­house, with the best of every­thing from fur­ni­ture (the famed “aeron chair” was the default) to 24/7 food ser­vices and on-site chefs, to videogames station.

The new rules said work was fun and we were design­ing a new world to make that prophecy real, expand­ing to an ethos of work hard/play hard, with long hours in the office fol­lowed by over the top par­ties, thrown by every startup and includ­ing top music tal­ent. It was all a lit­tle unreal, feel­ing like we were liv­ing through a movie.

At some of the par­ties, indus­try vet­er­ans (peo­ple with over 5 years of expe­ri­ence) were start­ing to whis­per about over-heating. But that was far from the pop­u­lar view and even the most con­ser­v­a­tive peo­ple doubted their own feel­ings about this, assum­ing that, since every­thing seemed to be mov­ing along, their gut was wrong.

It turned out that our gut feel was right and the unreal state we were in would soon come to a crash. It would be the last time I wouldn’t trust my gut.

… and here’s the ver­sion after edit­ing. I thought you might enjoy that rec­ol­lec­tion of a bygone era.

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