... people and companies have easy and inexpensive access to the Internet," he said.
By November 1999, Gartner had begun warning that many companies would fall out of the e-business model by 2001, with 75 percent of projects failing to be delivered.
"Dot-com companies based on less-than-successful business models were unable to sustain themselves or generate profits," noted Bittinger. "Investors became more wary and started looking more closely at dot-com business fundamentals."
After Nasdaq's amazing flight to the top, it subsequently crashed to 2,000 within a matter of months and plunged to about 1,000 in October 2002. Jobs were lost and millionaires became paupers, holding onto worthless stock certificates.
The Asia-Pacific region was not spared either. Chinadot-com underwent a retrenchment exercise, while Tom.com suspended trading six months after its IPO.
The ones that made it
But not all dot-coms were brought down by the bust. Five years after the spectacular crash, a handful weathered the storm.
dollarDEX, is one such company. The online wealth management portal was established in Singapore in 1999.
Richard Lai, dollarDEX's managing director, said the key to weathering through the crisis was to have a good business plan. The management team was clear about its strategy to go online, and it stuck with the plan.
"An online platform makes the most sense for us since, even during that time, the Internet penetration rate was quite high in Singapore," Lai explained. "Also, it was one way to distinguish us from incumbents like the banks and insurance companies. We can then provide 24/7 [customer] service."
According to Lai, the boom and the subsequent bust had no effect on the company.
"Frankly, the boom did not really figure into our strategy," he said. "We wanted to be profitable as soon as possible and we did so within the first two years. We focused on cash flow, not fund raising. We kept most of the funds raised (US$7.7m) and used them for expansion during the bust."
Indeed, it appears that dot-coms might not be completely extinct today. "Dot-com euphoria might be dead, but Internet-enabled business networks continue to thrive and make inroads into how businesses operate," noted Gartner's Bittinger.
He pointed out that the "network era" of today is largely driven by three laws: Moore' s, which highlights the growing processing power of...
