Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dr. Koop and The Bubble

dcurt.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#11

Post by dm8 »

adventureful wrote: post #8

I remember CommerceOne being worth $20 billion, and having a gazillion dollar burn rate (they lost $3.7 billion over 10 years from 1994 to 2004). There was a famous story at the time that the CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past. Internet Capital Group was another similarly insane story, once worth $60 billion. VA Linux IPO'd at a valuation of $7 billion if…

>> CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past.

Were you referring to CommerceOne CEO?

Out of curiosity, how was AAPL doing those days? Was Jobs taken seriously by Silicon Valley during those days?

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#13

Post by adventureful »

dm8 wrote: post #11
adventureful wrote: post #8

I remember CommerceOne being worth $20 billion, and having a gazillion dollar burn rate (they lost $3.7 billion over 10 years from 1994 to 2004). There was a famous story at the time that the CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past. Internet Capital Group was another similarly insane story, once worth $60 billion. VA Linux IPO'd at a valuation of $7 billion if…

>> CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past. Were you referring to CommerceOne CEO? Out of curiosity, how was AAPL doing those days? Was Jobs taken seriously by Silicon Valley during those days?

Jobs was absolutely taken seriously by Silicon Valley at that time. There was a period, from when he left Apple, through the NeXT days, that Silicon Valley seemed to understand that he had begun to grow up / mature as a leader. When he first left Apple he was a creative pariah, and many of his peers thought he was a dangerous leader; by the time he joined Apple again, that view had faded almost completely. There were big questions over what could actually be done to turn Apple around, few saw the iPod coming, but most people seemed to understand that Jobs could bring a spark back to Apple that had been missing for a long long time.

I don't think Wall Street believed in Apple much, or that Jobs could turn it around - Wall Street didn't see what he did of course. You can see that in the stock valuation that Apple received during the bubble days, it didn't pop even a fraction as much as other stocks like Sun or Oracle (Sun was worth $150+ billion or so, and Apple around $30 billion; granted Sun was riding a direct wave benefit with their hardware that had sent their revenue parabolic).

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#14

Post by adventureful »

firebones wrote: post #6
zinssmeister wrote: post #3

Simply put, back then there weren't enough eye balls looking at websites. Now, more than 10 years later, you see people use the web nearly nonstop. Back then they were right when they said "The Internet is going to change the world", but they got a bit too ahead of themselves. But maybe that's what it took to get to where we are today.

You've got that right. Look at all that changed in 15 years in terms of what it took to garner $43,000 in revenue compared to doing the same now. An independent developer can, in less than the time it took Dr Koop to hit that number, hit the same number with 1/1000th (if not 1/10,000th) of the capital outlay (their $8 million in money), and nary a Microsoft product in sight. Between fifteen years of open source, comp…

Great point. Today with a $50 virtual server or equivalent, little to no marketing (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon et al. will take care of that), and Google Adsense you can hit $43k a year in sales with not too much trouble.

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#15

Post by JVIDEL »

dm8 wrote: post #11
adventureful wrote: post #8

I remember CommerceOne being worth $20 billion, and having a gazillion dollar burn rate (they lost $3.7 billion over 10 years from 1994 to 2004). There was a famous story at the time that the CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past. Internet Capital Group was another similarly insane story, once worth $60 billion. VA Linux IPO'd at a valuation of $7 billion if…

>> CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past. Were you referring to CommerceOne CEO? Out of curiosity, how was AAPL doing those days? Was Jobs taken seriously by Silicon Valley during those days?

Jobs had just returned to AAPL and was cleaning up the mess left by Sculley and Amelio

And no he wasn't taken seriously at all, he was still remembered as the guy who created the abysmal AppleIII, botched the Mac and then got fired from his own company.

In fact no VCs invested in his second company NeXT, only himself, Ross Perot and Canon did. That company had to leave hardware altogether and was bought by AAPL because they desperately needed a new OS, so ObjectiveC and NeXTSTEP became the founding blocks of OSX and later iOS.

Back then Jobs only recent success had been Pixar's Toy Story.

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#16

Post by adventureful »

JVIDEL wrote: post #15
dm8 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> CEO wouldn't take Bill Gates' call because CommerceOne was the future and Microsoft was the past. Were you referring to CommerceOne CEO? Out of curiosity, how was AAPL doing those days? Was Jobs taken seriously by Silicon Valley during those days?

Jobs had just returned to AAPL and was cleaning up the mess left by Sculley and Amelio And no he wasn't taken seriously at all, he was still remembered as the guy who created the abysmal AppleIII, botched the Mac and then got fired from his own company. In fact no VCs invested in his second company NeXT, only himself, Ross Perot and Canon did. That company had to leave hardware altogether and was bought by AAPL becau…

I disagree. There's a difference between valuing NeXT as a business and valuing Steve Jobs as a visionary or creative genius. Investors didn't believe in the business prospects of NeXT, but Jobs was still very highly regarded by the valley.

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#18

Post by adventureful »

joezydeco wrote: post #12

Does anyone posess an archive of fuckedcompany.com? Back in the thick of the implosion, this site provided a daily ringside seat. It was amazing.

Here's a great one I had never heard of previously:

"Epods makes 2.2-lb portable internet searching devices. They just laid off 50 more, the second layoff, bringing them to 24 people down from 100."

Re: Dr. Koop and The Bubble

#20

Post by smacktoward »

joezydeco wrote: post #12

Does anyone posess an archive of fuckedcompany.com? Back in the thick of the implosion, this site provided a daily ringside seat. It was amazing.

Pud eventually rolled the best of fuckedcompany.com into a book: http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-Com-Flame...

(Yes, it's on Kindle)

Post reply on HN