Return of the dot-com; New generation chases success aware
Chicago Sun-Times, Apr 30, 2007 by Howard Wolinsky
After the bust of 2001, you think the Internet business, with notable exceptions, such as Amazon, eBay and Google, was a digital dodo that went extinct.
But, bunkie, the reports on the demise of the Net are premature.
A new Internet generation of young entrepreneurs, chastened by the excesses of their predecessors with their half-baked business plans and shaky technology, and experienced hands alike are betting on online success.
One of them is Keith Schacht, 27, a serial entrepreneur in Chicago who now is running JobCoin to link employers with potential employees through blogs and Web sites. "You just have to read www.TechCrunch.com [a blog dedicated to profiling Internet companies and products], or walk into any San Francisco coffee shop to see that there's a resurgence of Internet startups," he said.
It's happening here, too.
Take note: Wired magazine recently listed the 10 hottest next generation Web companies. Two of them, 37signals, the developer of Web-based collaboration tools such as to-do lists and calendars, and so forth), and FeedBurner, a major provider of services to blogs, are based here. Both companies won Chicago Innovation Awards in 2006 from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Locally based Tickets.com, the online secondary ticket broker, and Threadless, the hit T-shirt design outfit, are already big and getting bigger.
Schacht runs Chicago Beta, a social gathering of young or "in beta" companies, and the Web site ChicagoBeta.com features a growing list of in-betas.
The emphasis is on "Web 2.0," a term loosely referring to user- generated content and collaboration and social networking a la MySpace. Web 2.0 also refers generally to this next generation of online companies and software.
Schacht said, "There is still no guarantee that any given startup will figure it out and turn a profit, but there are a lot more examples of people who have done it, there are some tried-and-true methods of doing it. So people are more confident. Internet adoption among the population in general is greater, so all of a sudden you have a bigger user base than you did five years ago. All of this is just a natural progression as an industry matures."
Fred Hoch, president of the Illinois IT Association, representing software and other tech companies in the state, said Web 2.0 companies use Internet connectivity to do such things as "change the way you order take-out or the way you manage your storage. These companies are focused on creating greater efficiencies in business processes.
Secondly, it's about access. New software companies that provide software as a service give users greater access, and therefore better use, of applications and in so doing change the way business is done.
Third, it's about community. How can you be more efficient or find out more by being part of a directed community? It's not the entire Internet community. It's a community specific to an issue, challenge, business or otherwise.
To the left are the elevator pitches -- an entrepreneur's business-plan pitch that's short enough to make in an elevator ride with a venture capitalist -- at the next generation Chicago Internet companies.
AASHISH DALAL, 29
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