10 March 2000 - the day the NASDAQ Spiked

I don't know much about the stock market - but isn't a graph like that bad news?

Kino

It's dropped $3 per share in graph over a 1 day period, but that's less than a 2% drop so not too meaningful. I think Cornwall's thinking the Wall Street Journal piece on autolink might have a bit more influence.

I am not really personally very knowladgable about the whole VC market - I have people for that :) Anyway, "my people" tells me (and show me!) that we are almost back to the happy dot-com days now when it comes to investers interest in what we do - online business. Money seem to flow around almost as easy and plenty as they used to do. With the right ideas and the right people it seems to be easier now to get money than it has been for years.

So, even though the Google stocks may be going down a little bit now it dosn't really reflect the possitive attitude I generally see and hear about in the market.

The big difference, though, between then and now is that the "new dot-coms" are actually making money and have solid business plans! That is why I am so possitive about the market now. I think investors will stick around if we can keep this up - making money, that is. I honestly don't see any "depression" right around the corner ...

I still remember where I was, watching it on the news and looking at my business partner and saying "well, it's over."

Bummer. At the last SES I attended, VCs were all over the place, looking to throw money at seemingly anyone with a business plan, let alone an operating, profitable business. That was 2003/2004, but money still seems to be flowing. The difference is that it is smart money now.

People aren't going to get bucket loads of money because they have a domain name and an idea. Boom and bust isn't new. It is after the boom and bust that the serious investors get busy.

funny thing is i'm making more money than ever and every month opens up more opportunities to make money online, of course it is harder to make money day trading

In 1999 i made a bomb, not online though - i made it selling crap advertising to german dot coms - little boys with way too much money, and not a 10th of the business savvy needed to survive...

They seemed somewhat overburdened with all that VC cash, so i helped them dispose of as much of it as possible :)

I find that whole era fascinating. Not just from an Internet perspective but from a general business perspective. They were quite simply crazy days. All traditional models of doing business went out the window. The whole model was to burn as much cash as possible trying to gain market share and then race towards an IPO. Some made it, most didn't. I think I read somewhere that Yahoo, after only being 1 year old, was valued, on paper, almost as much as News Corporation and Continental Airlines put together! Things like that just didnt make any logical sense and yet the investment banks still pushed these stocks like crazy to their investors. Firms like JDMorgan, Goldman Sachs, etc. were the ones responsible for pushing it to the stupefying heights it reached. They all knew it would end at some point but no one was going to be the one to back out early when they was so much cash to be made.

This book Dot.Con gives a really good account of the era. Very enjoyable read.

I agree with some of the comments above. These are definitely exciting times. There is a real buzz again in the Internet sector. Everyday I see new online ventures that really blow me away. There so many good businesses today that offer genuine value that would not exist without the medium of the Internet. It is similar in a lot of respects to the heady days of 99-00 but the difference, as Mikkel quite rightly points out, is that companies are actually making a profit. That was a dirty word in '00!