By Tony Hallett, 30 August 2000 00:20
COMMENT What's now essential to the investment community in the UK is some old-fashioned grit and a clear path to profitability - at least according to research out this week. Knowledge of your market, knowledge of your competition, knowledge of management and financial fundamentals might also help. While silicon.com welcomes these revelations, it's tempting to question why anyone would have thought things could turn out any different. True, a dot-com bellwether like Amazon.com can still - just - promise to go for profitability only when it's ready. But for most companies, at least the prospect of profits - however far off - is a must. Too many dot-com start-ups have fallen into the trap of assuming success will follow easily generated hype and a good URL, only to find the going tough when investors begin to demand results. And this has nothing to do with sectors. Everyday we hear how business-to-consumer (B2C) ventures had better beware, while business-to-business (B2B) companies will boom. But this is a lazy simplification - there will be B2C companies that do well (Amazon, anyone?) while companies in the more profitable B2B arena founder. What it normally comes down to is a sound business plan, executed well by the right people at the right time. In fact, it depends on the same factors that have determined the success or failure of most businesses for several hundred years. That'll be news to some dot-coms - and some people will always claim the net changes some business fundamentals - but in a few years it will be hard to imagine anyone ever thought any different.
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