1
00:00:04,160 --> 00:00:07,160
Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how

2
00:00:07,240 --> 00:00:14,400
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

3
00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:17,759
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer

4
00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:20,640
Speaker 1: with how stuff works dot com and on tech Stuff.

5
00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:24,400
Speaker 1: We like to cover all things tech, whether we love them,

6
00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:27,960
Speaker 1: hate them, or otherwise indifferent to them, as long as

7
00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:30,160
Speaker 1: the stories themselves are interesting. And I think that the

8
00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:33,320
Speaker 1: story we're gonna cover today or begin to cover today

9
00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:37,080
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, this is a part one of a multipart episode.

10
00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:40,960
Speaker 1: I think this is a particularly interesting story. It's got

11
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:44,920
Speaker 1: a lot of morals to it, write a lot of

12
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:48,000
Speaker 1: lessons to take home. And today we're gonna talk about

13
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:50,280
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble and what happened to some of

14
00:00:50,320 --> 00:00:55,280
Speaker 1: the folks and companies that we're affected by that bubble bursting.

15
00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:58,840
Speaker 1: And it's actually a really fascinating series of stories. And

16
00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:01,160
Speaker 1: as I said this as part one of the discussion,

17
00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:03,440
Speaker 1: it turns out there are more companies that are really

18
00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:08,840
Speaker 1: important or were really important, that we should cover, including

19
00:01:08,880 --> 00:01:13,600
Speaker 1: a couple that weathered the dot com disaster and stuck

20
00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:17,600
Speaker 1: around and are flourishing even now. Cough Amazon, cough cough.

21
00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:20,920
Speaker 1: But before we jump into a where are they now discussion,

22
00:01:21,280 --> 00:01:23,920
Speaker 1: I should backtrack and talk about what the dot com

23
00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:28,200
Speaker 1: bubble was. Some of you may even be young enough

24
00:01:28,200 --> 00:01:32,280
Speaker 1: where you weren't around during the dot com bubble days,

25
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:34,360
Speaker 1: or maybe you were very young when it happened. I

26
00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:38,160
Speaker 1: was actually entering into my professional career at the time

27
00:01:38,200 --> 00:01:41,679
Speaker 1: of the dot com bubble bursting, and it was a

28
00:01:41,800 --> 00:01:45,000
Speaker 1: rough time. I did not work directly in the dot

29
00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:47,760
Speaker 1: com sector. I worked in a company that had a

30
00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:51,640
Speaker 1: lot of clients that were dot com clients. There were

31
00:01:51,640 --> 00:01:54,360
Speaker 1: there were companies that were using the company I worked for.

32
00:01:54,400 --> 00:01:56,560
Speaker 1: I worked for a consulting firm back in those days,

33
00:01:57,320 --> 00:02:02,000
Speaker 1: the dark dark days, pre health stuff works, and a

34
00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:04,480
Speaker 1: lot of our clients were dot com companies. When the

35
00:02:04,600 --> 00:02:07,640
Speaker 1: bubble burst, most of those companies ended up going away

36
00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:12,600
Speaker 1: or otherwise having severe restrictions put in place, and that

37
00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:15,280
Speaker 1: affected the company I worked for. So this was a

38
00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:19,200
Speaker 1: big thing. It wasn't just that certain companies went under

39
00:02:19,240 --> 00:02:21,639
Speaker 1: and people lost their jobs. There was a ripple effect

40
00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:28,720
Speaker 1: that was felt throughout commerce in general for quite some time. Now,

41
00:02:28,800 --> 00:02:32,040
Speaker 1: let's address this concept of what an economic bubble is

42
00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:34,560
Speaker 1: in general, so that we can just understand what we're

43
00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:40,480
Speaker 1: talking about. Business Insider offers this helpful definition. And economic

44
00:02:40,520 --> 00:02:43,480
Speaker 1: bubble exists whenever the price of an asset that may

45
00:02:43,520 --> 00:02:46,680
Speaker 1: be freely exchanged in a well established market first sores

46
00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:49,520
Speaker 1: then plummets over a sustained period of time at rates

47
00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:52,200
Speaker 1: that are decoupled from the rate of growth of the

48
00:02:52,240 --> 00:02:55,480
Speaker 1: income that might reasonably be expected to be realized from

49
00:02:55,520 --> 00:03:01,080
Speaker 1: owning or holding the asset. Thanks Business Insider, that clears

50
00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:04,680
Speaker 1: things right up. Let's break that down because it's actually

51
00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:07,399
Speaker 1: a pretty simple concept when you when you really look

52
00:03:07,440 --> 00:03:12,000
Speaker 1: at it. But for some reason, some entities find it

53
00:03:12,040 --> 00:03:16,240
Speaker 1: necessary to obviuse skate things with language rather than just

54
00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:20,359
Speaker 1: say things in simple terms. And an economic bubble occurs

55
00:03:20,360 --> 00:03:23,800
Speaker 1: when people are essentially paying more for something, then what

56
00:03:23,960 --> 00:03:28,320
Speaker 1: that's something is ultimately worth. And keep in mind what

57
00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:32,720
Speaker 1: something is worth is based upon our perception of its value. Right.

58
00:03:32,800 --> 00:03:36,800
Speaker 1: There's nothing intrinsic about any one thing versus any other

59
00:03:36,840 --> 00:03:41,080
Speaker 1: thing that makes it automatically worth more or less. It's

60
00:03:41,080 --> 00:03:45,680
Speaker 1: how we perceive it. Uh. Some things are necessities, right,

61
00:03:45,760 --> 00:03:48,680
Speaker 1: like food and water. Those clearly have a value in

62
00:03:48,720 --> 00:03:51,360
Speaker 1: the sense that they keep us alive. And depending upon

63
00:03:51,600 --> 00:03:54,640
Speaker 1: how hungry or thirsty you are, it may be of

64
00:03:54,760 --> 00:03:57,240
Speaker 1: much greater value to you at that time. If you

65
00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:01,920
Speaker 1: are absolutely stuffed with the last visit to the all

66
00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:04,440
Speaker 1: you can eat buffet over at the Golden Corral, you're

67
00:04:04,440 --> 00:04:07,560
Speaker 1: probably not really ready to pay a whole bunch of

68
00:04:07,560 --> 00:04:10,400
Speaker 1: money for a steak. But if you haven't eaten for

69
00:04:10,600 --> 00:04:13,520
Speaker 1: a couple of days, that might be worth everything to you.

70
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:17,080
Speaker 1: So the point being that while they were talking in absolutes,

71
00:04:17,960 --> 00:04:21,640
Speaker 1: really you should remember these are gradients. So people start

72
00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:25,960
Speaker 1: paying more for something than what the perceived value of

73
00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:30,480
Speaker 1: that thing actually is. Eventually, this imbalance reaches a tipping point,

74
00:04:30,920 --> 00:04:33,440
Speaker 1: and you might say people wisen up, or maybe they

75
00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:35,919
Speaker 1: get cold feet. They realize that they're probably not going

76
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:38,360
Speaker 1: to get a return on any investment they put into

77
00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:41,960
Speaker 1: that company. The point is everyone starts to pull away

78
00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:44,560
Speaker 1: from that thing that they had been pouring money into,

79
00:04:44,839 --> 00:04:48,159
Speaker 1: and then the vacuum created causes the market to destabilize

80
00:04:48,160 --> 00:04:51,159
Speaker 1: and ultimately collapse in on itself, at least in the

81
00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:54,240
Speaker 1: case of a bubble collapse. And there's been a lot

82
00:04:54,240 --> 00:04:57,520
Speaker 1: of economic bubbles over the years, generally speaking. The dot

83
00:04:57,560 --> 00:05:01,160
Speaker 1: com bubble began in the spring of nineteen ninety seven

84
00:05:01,440 --> 00:05:04,960
Speaker 1: and collapsed initially around two thousand, two thousand one. That's

85
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:10,359
Speaker 1: when we started seeing the first major trouble spots arise,

86
00:05:11,279 --> 00:05:14,680
Speaker 1: and then you would see the aftershocks of that continue

87
00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:18,840
Speaker 1: further into the future of that time. Our past time

88
00:05:18,920 --> 00:05:22,520
Speaker 1: is linear, and so it kind of shook out by

89
00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:25,159
Speaker 1: two thousand three. So seven to two thousand three is

90
00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:27,680
Speaker 1: generally the period of the dot com bubble, with a

91
00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:30,320
Speaker 1: lot of the company's going out of business around two

92
00:05:30,400 --> 00:05:33,520
Speaker 1: thousand two thousand one. So what caused this bubble and

93
00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:36,640
Speaker 1: its collapse. Well, I've done a few episodes about the

94
00:05:36,680 --> 00:05:38,560
Speaker 1: dot com bubble, so I'm just going to give you

95
00:05:38,640 --> 00:05:44,200
Speaker 1: a summarized version of what happened this episode. In the

96
00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:47,640
Speaker 1: f c C in the United States lifted restrictions that

97
00:05:47,760 --> 00:05:51,359
Speaker 1: had up to that point outlawed commercial use of the Internet,

98
00:05:51,400 --> 00:05:54,320
Speaker 1: so now people could actually use the Internet for commercial

99
00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:58,000
Speaker 1: purposes starting in ninety one. One year earlier, back in

100
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:01,840
Speaker 1: Tim Burners Lee had built the first web server and

101
00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:05,839
Speaker 1: web client. He was working with CERN, that's the institution

102
00:06:05,920 --> 00:06:09,440
Speaker 1: that runs the large Hadron Collider, so he had built

103
00:06:09,480 --> 00:06:12,480
Speaker 1: the first one of those back in So in ninety one,

104
00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:15,960
Speaker 1: the web is brand spanking new, almost no one has

105
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,240
Speaker 1: heard of it. Really, it's in research facilities and universities.

106
00:06:20,520 --> 00:06:23,240
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I saw the Worldwide Web,

107
00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:26,720
Speaker 1: first time I ever saw a web client was when

108
00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:32,400
Speaker 1: I was going to a college in North Georgia, probably

109
00:06:33,560 --> 00:06:36,880
Speaker 1: three so that's a few years after the invention of

110
00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:39,599
Speaker 1: the web client and the web server, and I remember

111
00:06:39,600 --> 00:06:41,880
Speaker 1: thinking when I looked at it, this is never gonna

112
00:06:41,960 --> 00:06:45,880
Speaker 1: take off. It was way too slow. Even with our

113
00:06:45,960 --> 00:06:51,320
Speaker 1: our our colleges computer connections, web pages just took forever

114
00:06:51,400 --> 00:06:53,360
Speaker 1: to load, and they were really boring to look at.

115
00:06:53,480 --> 00:06:55,960
Speaker 1: I thought, why bother with that? Just use tell net.

116
00:06:57,839 --> 00:07:00,440
Speaker 1: So I probably would be one of these pulled back

117
00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:04,960
Speaker 1: in the dot com days who made some misguided decisions,

118
00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:08,200
Speaker 1: because I certainly didn't see the Web becoming nearly as

119
00:07:08,240 --> 00:07:11,120
Speaker 1: popular as it did, nor would I have guessed that

120
00:07:11,200 --> 00:07:14,200
Speaker 1: the Web would one day serve at least in part

121
00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:17,960
Speaker 1: as the reason why I had a job. And now

122
00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:22,640
Speaker 1: I am totally there. Anyway, The point was, it was

123
00:07:22,800 --> 00:07:26,320
Speaker 1: early days, but everyone was really excited about it. The

124
00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:29,680
Speaker 1: potential for the Internet was enormous, and everyone kind of

125
00:07:29,680 --> 00:07:32,840
Speaker 1: recognized it. Eventually started hearing people talk about something called

126
00:07:32,840 --> 00:07:38,120
Speaker 1: the Information super Highway referring to the Internet, and it

127
00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:44,000
Speaker 1: was just starting to take hold. Even by the mainstream

128
00:07:44,080 --> 00:07:47,400
Speaker 1: public was still largely unaware of the Internet and what

129
00:07:47,520 --> 00:07:49,080
Speaker 1: it was all about. There were a lot of folks

130
00:07:49,280 --> 00:07:52,080
Speaker 1: who thought that the Internet and the Web were the

131
00:07:52,160 --> 00:07:54,520
Speaker 1: same thing. You could argue that there's still a lot

132
00:07:54,560 --> 00:07:56,720
Speaker 1: of people who think the Internet and the Web are

133
00:07:56,760 --> 00:07:59,800
Speaker 1: the same thing. They're not. The Web is just one

134
00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:02,360
Speaker 1: facet of the Internet. It's kind of like a layer

135
00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:05,080
Speaker 1: on top of the foundation that is the Internet, with

136
00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:09,040
Speaker 1: other layers like email and FTP servers and that sort

137
00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:13,480
Speaker 1: of thing also existing on this foundation. Remember, the Internet

138
00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:17,400
Speaker 1: itself is a network of networks. It's the interconnectivity of

139
00:08:17,440 --> 00:08:21,200
Speaker 1: all these different machines and the protocols that allow them

140
00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:24,360
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other. That's what the Internet is now.

141
00:08:24,400 --> 00:08:26,480
Speaker 1: You may have even seen some news clips from the

142
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:30,960
Speaker 1: mid nineties of various news anchors and television show hosts

143
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:33,760
Speaker 1: trying to suss out what the heck all this Internet

144
00:08:33,880 --> 00:08:37,679
Speaker 1: terminology actually meant. There's a great clip a Bryant Gumbel

145
00:08:37,760 --> 00:08:40,839
Speaker 1: who is trying to figure out the structure of an

146
00:08:40,840 --> 00:08:44,120
Speaker 1: email address, and he's talking about the AT symbol. You know,

147
00:08:44,160 --> 00:08:46,080
Speaker 1: the A inside the circle, and he's like, is that

148
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:48,679
Speaker 1: an AT? I heard it was an AT, but that

149
00:08:48,760 --> 00:08:51,920
Speaker 1: can't be right, right, And so it's kind of charming

150
00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:56,080
Speaker 1: really to see a time when the Internet had been

151
00:08:56,120 --> 00:08:58,520
Speaker 1: around for a few years, people in the know had

152
00:08:58,559 --> 00:09:00,880
Speaker 1: been using it, but it was just now starting to

153
00:09:00,880 --> 00:09:05,800
Speaker 1: get into mainstream consciousness. Uh. It was a really exciting

154
00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:08,240
Speaker 1: time and technology and a lot of companies were looking

155
00:09:08,240 --> 00:09:11,160
Speaker 1: at the Internet as the next possible way to reach

156
00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:15,320
Speaker 1: customers or to convert people into customers, and because the

157
00:09:15,400 --> 00:09:18,679
Speaker 1: FCC had lifted those commercial restrictions on the Internet, companies

158
00:09:18,760 --> 00:09:21,840
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to create a presence there and define

159
00:09:21,880 --> 00:09:26,760
Speaker 1: their online brands. In an interview that same year that

160
00:09:26,800 --> 00:09:28,720
Speaker 1: Bryant Gumble was trying to figure out what the ADS

161
00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:32,240
Speaker 1: symbol was, Eric Schmidt, who would later on make a

162
00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:35,520
Speaker 1: really big name for himself over at Google, proclaimed that

163
00:09:35,559 --> 00:09:38,880
Speaker 1: by the year two thousand, every major company would have

164
00:09:38,960 --> 00:09:41,440
Speaker 1: a presence on the Web in some way, and he

165
00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:44,160
Speaker 1: was right on the money right there. Everyone needed to

166
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:47,360
Speaker 1: get on the web, even if they didn't understand exactly

167
00:09:47,360 --> 00:09:49,080
Speaker 1: what they were going to do. Once they had a

168
00:09:49,120 --> 00:09:51,720
Speaker 1: web presence, they knew that they needed to be there

169
00:09:51,800 --> 00:09:54,360
Speaker 1: because people were going to go there. And while in

170
00:09:54,400 --> 00:09:56,480
Speaker 1: the early days no one was really sure how the

171
00:09:56,520 --> 00:09:59,400
Speaker 1: web might serve as a way to generate revenue apart

172
00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:02,800
Speaker 1: from Internet service providers who were making money by charging

173
00:10:02,840 --> 00:10:06,600
Speaker 1: people for Internet access, everyone was sure that the web

174
00:10:06,679 --> 00:10:09,480
Speaker 1: was the pathway to fame and fortune or if you

175
00:10:09,559 --> 00:10:13,200
Speaker 1: prefer if you're an Indiana Jones fan, origin and Glory kid,

176
00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:18,880
Speaker 1: fortune and glory. Many people were becoming Web citizens, meaning

177
00:10:18,880 --> 00:10:21,560
Speaker 1: that you had a lot of people subscribing to services

178
00:10:21,559 --> 00:10:24,280
Speaker 1: that would allow them to access the Internet. Good Old

179
00:10:24,280 --> 00:10:28,000
Speaker 1: American Online would be one of those, America Online giving

180
00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:35,400
Speaker 1: me free CDs to act as coasters since six uh.

181
00:10:35,520 --> 00:10:37,080
Speaker 1: But a lot of people were starting to subscribe to

182
00:10:37,080 --> 00:10:39,480
Speaker 1: Internet service plans and start to serve the web. So

183
00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:42,200
Speaker 1: there was definitely an audience there for companies, and the

184
00:10:42,200 --> 00:10:46,120
Speaker 1: potential for customers was also there. So there was this

185
00:10:46,280 --> 00:10:50,959
Speaker 1: unprecedented method of reaching out to people who would become

186
00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:54,880
Speaker 1: your customers. That gave companies a chance to have a

187
00:10:54,920 --> 00:10:59,040
Speaker 1: more personal connection with their customers instead of just blasting

188
00:10:59,040 --> 00:11:03,120
Speaker 1: out ads everywhere. And this became something of a land grab,

189
00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:05,440
Speaker 1: and in the midst of all this chaos, a new

190
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:09,200
Speaker 1: entity emerged, and these were companies that didn't just flock

191
00:11:09,320 --> 00:11:12,120
Speaker 1: to the Web in order to extend an already existing

192
00:11:12,160 --> 00:11:15,760
Speaker 1: brand like Coca Cola or Nike or something like that.

193
00:11:15,840 --> 00:11:19,920
Speaker 1: These were companies that could not have existed before the web.

194
00:11:20,360 --> 00:11:23,800
Speaker 1: These were the web based or web integrated companies that

195
00:11:23,840 --> 00:11:27,199
Speaker 1: depended heavily upon the Web for their respective business models.

196
00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:32,520
Speaker 1: These were the dot coms. Now, not every dot com

197
00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:35,640
Speaker 1: was a web based company, I suppose. I mean, the

198
00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:40,280
Speaker 1: dot com bubble affected more than just Internet related companies.

199
00:11:40,840 --> 00:11:44,120
Speaker 1: Some possibly fell more into the general technology category, but

200
00:11:44,280 --> 00:11:47,720
Speaker 1: many of the famous ones either depended solely or heavily

201
00:11:47,800 --> 00:11:50,080
Speaker 1: on the Internet as part of their business. And in

202
00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:55,760
Speaker 1: April nineteen seven, business was booming. Startup companies were receiving

203
00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:59,360
Speaker 1: enormous amounts of investment capital. They were going to initial

204
00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:03,360
Speaker 1: public offerings super early, so they were turning into from

205
00:12:03,400 --> 00:12:08,280
Speaker 1: privately held companies into publicly traded companies at an enormous rate.

206
00:12:08,400 --> 00:12:11,080
Speaker 1: I mean, we were seeing I p o s every

207
00:12:11,240 --> 00:12:14,480
Speaker 1: few weeks, it seemed like, from these various startup companies,

208
00:12:14,480 --> 00:12:17,880
Speaker 1: and people were eager to purchase shares in them and

209
00:12:18,160 --> 00:12:21,400
Speaker 1: to join in this gold rush that was the early

210
00:12:21,480 --> 00:12:26,720
Speaker 1: days of the commercial web. Uh so dot com companies

211
00:12:26,800 --> 00:12:33,320
Speaker 1: represented this idea of of opportunity and potential, and no

212
00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:35,280
Speaker 1: one was really sure where it was going to go,

213
00:12:35,679 --> 00:12:38,520
Speaker 1: but everyone was pretty sure it was gonna get really awesome.

214
00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:41,319
Speaker 1: If you back the right company, you would strike a

215
00:12:41,440 --> 00:12:43,560
Speaker 1: vein of gold and you would be set for life.

216
00:12:43,960 --> 00:12:46,040
Speaker 1: Companies that were a little more than a name and

217
00:12:46,080 --> 00:12:49,400
Speaker 1: a cool sounding idea, we're getting millions of dollars and

218
00:12:49,520 --> 00:12:52,360
Speaker 1: investments long before they could prove that they had any

219
00:12:52,440 --> 00:12:55,640
Speaker 1: sort of working business plan or strategy. And so these

220
00:12:55,679 --> 00:12:58,800
Speaker 1: new startups began to sell lots of stock, and those

221
00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:04,120
Speaker 1: stock prices were skyrocketing. Many startups rewarded employees with stocks,

222
00:13:04,160 --> 00:13:07,880
Speaker 1: paying them in shares of the company. Typically you'd be

223
00:13:07,920 --> 00:13:10,960
Speaker 1: promised a salary that would be pretty good, but the

224
00:13:10,960 --> 00:13:13,559
Speaker 1: stock options had the potential to turn you into a millionaire.

225
00:13:14,679 --> 00:13:18,600
Speaker 1: Several companies had employees who, at least on paper, had

226
00:13:18,640 --> 00:13:22,400
Speaker 1: become millionaires because of these stock options. Uh Normally, you

227
00:13:22,480 --> 00:13:25,280
Speaker 1: can't sell your stock options right away, so you have

228
00:13:25,360 --> 00:13:27,040
Speaker 1: to wait for them before you can. You have to

229
00:13:27,040 --> 00:13:29,400
Speaker 1: wait a certain amount of time before you can exercise

230
00:13:29,480 --> 00:13:32,720
Speaker 1: them and then sell them, which meant that on paper. Sure,

231
00:13:32,760 --> 00:13:35,520
Speaker 1: you're a millionaire, but you can't actually access any of

232
00:13:35,520 --> 00:13:37,560
Speaker 1: that money or spend it in any meaningful way. If

233
00:13:37,600 --> 00:13:39,840
Speaker 1: you started spending, you would essentially be going into debt

234
00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:42,120
Speaker 1: and you would have to wait for your stocks to

235
00:13:42,640 --> 00:13:45,319
Speaker 1: mature or you're really you're for you to be able

236
00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:47,560
Speaker 1: to exercise your options is really what you would need

237
00:13:47,600 --> 00:13:50,080
Speaker 1: to be able to do, and then sell that off

238
00:13:50,200 --> 00:13:53,920
Speaker 1: in order to actually get access to that money. Meanwhile,

239
00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:59,280
Speaker 1: you had companies creating ridiculous head hunting tactics in order

240
00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:02,160
Speaker 1: to gain the right talent, and folks would jump from

241
00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:05,280
Speaker 1: job to job. They get lured away from one company

242
00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:07,520
Speaker 1: to another with a promise of more cash or better

243
00:14:07,559 --> 00:14:11,600
Speaker 1: benefits and more stock. And this was really a crazy

244
00:14:11,720 --> 00:14:15,239
Speaker 1: time to be working in any sort of tech industry.

245
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:19,000
Speaker 1: There was no such thing as loyalty on either side,

246
00:14:19,600 --> 00:14:23,880
Speaker 1: because you had companies that were overinflated and then going

247
00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:26,440
Speaker 1: under in the course of just a couple of years,

248
00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:30,440
Speaker 1: and you had employees who would desktop from one company

249
00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:33,960
Speaker 1: to another at the slightest indication that they would be

250
00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:38,200
Speaker 1: able to get a favorable deal. So it really destabilized

251
00:14:38,240 --> 00:14:42,080
Speaker 1: the workforce, and I think we're still feeling effects of

252
00:14:42,120 --> 00:14:45,600
Speaker 1: that more than a decade later. The stock inflation in

253
00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:50,800
Speaker 1: particular was ultimately unsustainable back in before the bubble began

254
00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:54,480
Speaker 1: to inflate. The Nasdaq Stock Exchange, which is home to

255
00:14:54,600 --> 00:14:59,000
Speaker 1: many tech company stocks, it typically has younger industry companies.

256
00:14:59,040 --> 00:15:02,400
Speaker 1: The the old companies are on the Dow Stock Exchange,

257
00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:06,280
Speaker 1: but the really the young, scrappy ones tend to be

258
00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:09,800
Speaker 1: on NASDAC, including most of the tech companies. Uh. Well,

259
00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:13,040
Speaker 1: the Nasdaq index was at one thousand points, but hang on,

260
00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:15,040
Speaker 1: what the heck are NAZDAC points and what did those

261
00:15:15,080 --> 00:15:17,760
Speaker 1: points even mean? Well, to get at this number, you

262
00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:19,880
Speaker 1: have to follow a few steps, and to understand this,

263
00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:22,880
Speaker 1: I'm going to use a hypothetical example. So let's say

264
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:25,600
Speaker 1: I have a company and I've launched my new company.

265
00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:29,040
Speaker 1: We'll call it um Oh Ben would like this. I'm

266
00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:33,280
Speaker 1: gonna call it Baby Jay's Lemonade stand and it gets

267
00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:36,360
Speaker 1: listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. So the number of

268
00:15:36,360 --> 00:15:40,440
Speaker 1: shares I issue and the price that those shares trade

269
00:15:40,480 --> 00:15:44,880
Speaker 1: at decide my company's market capitalization, which is the market

270
00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:48,720
Speaker 1: value of my company. So for this example, let's say

271
00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:52,320
Speaker 1: Baby Jay's Lemonade standards trading at ten dollars a share,

272
00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:55,480
Speaker 1: and I have a hundred thousand shares available on the market.

273
00:15:55,600 --> 00:15:58,760
Speaker 1: So we take those hundred thousand, we multiply that by ten,

274
00:15:59,280 --> 00:16:02,560
Speaker 1: and that gives me one million dollars. That should mean

275
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:05,560
Speaker 1: that Baby Jay's lemonade stand has a market capitalization of

276
00:16:05,560 --> 00:16:08,480
Speaker 1: a million bucks. Well, that's how much my company is

277
00:16:08,520 --> 00:16:11,680
Speaker 1: worth according to the market. But what about the NASDAC points. Well,

278
00:16:11,680 --> 00:16:15,840
Speaker 1: those points represent a market capitalization weighted approach, meaning the

279
00:16:15,880 --> 00:16:18,480
Speaker 1: points give you a quick glimpse of the value of

280
00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:22,080
Speaker 1: the stocks traded inside the index. Now, I'm talking about

281
00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:25,440
Speaker 1: a collective value here, not an individual company, and the

282
00:16:25,440 --> 00:16:28,560
Speaker 1: bigger companies have a stronger influence on the overall point

283
00:16:28,680 --> 00:16:32,040
Speaker 1: value than the smaller companies because the bigger companies typically

284
00:16:32,040 --> 00:16:35,760
Speaker 1: have way more shares on the market. So it has

285
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:39,920
Speaker 1: a relationship between the value of the shares and the

286
00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:43,480
Speaker 1: number of shares that are out there in total across

287
00:16:43,560 --> 00:16:46,760
Speaker 1: all of NASDAC. So if a few big companies are

288
00:16:46,800 --> 00:16:49,000
Speaker 1: doing really well and a bunch of smaller companies are

289
00:16:49,040 --> 00:16:52,640
Speaker 1: doing really not so well, the NASDAC point system may

290
00:16:52,680 --> 00:16:56,000
Speaker 1: still indicate a healthy growth because those larger companies are

291
00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:59,640
Speaker 1: making a bigger impact on the points than the smaller ones. Anyway,

292
00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:02,200
Speaker 1: back in April nineteen nine five, like I said, the

293
00:17:02,280 --> 00:17:06,240
Speaker 1: NAZADAC points were at about thousand. Five years later in

294
00:17:06,320 --> 00:17:10,720
Speaker 1: two thousand, in March the index was closer to five thousand,

295
00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:15,560
Speaker 1: so it had grown incredibly over the course of those

296
00:17:15,640 --> 00:17:17,840
Speaker 1: five years. Keep in mind, when the Nazdac launched, it

297
00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:21,760
Speaker 1: had one hundred points. That's how much they determined we're

298
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:24,200
Speaker 1: in there in nineteen seventy one when the NAZDAC launched

299
00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:27,560
Speaker 1: one hundred points. So from nineteen seventy one to nineteen

300
00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:29,639
Speaker 1: ninety five it went from one hundred points up to

301
00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,919
Speaker 1: a thousand points. From ninety five to two thousand it

302
00:17:32,960 --> 00:17:36,520
Speaker 1: went to five thousand points. That's an incredible amount of growth.

303
00:17:38,320 --> 00:17:41,399
Speaker 1: The actual combined value of all those stocks back in

304
00:17:41,480 --> 00:17:45,159
Speaker 1: March two thousand, before the bubble began to deflate, was

305
00:17:45,400 --> 00:17:51,560
Speaker 1: six point seven one trillion dollars. Wow, that's a lot

306
00:17:51,560 --> 00:17:56,440
Speaker 1: of cheddar By April sixth two thousand, so March two

307
00:17:56,480 --> 00:17:59,720
Speaker 1: thousand six point seven one trillion. April the next month

308
00:18:00,080 --> 00:18:02,760
Speaker 1: it had dropped to five point seven eight trillions, So,

309
00:18:02,800 --> 00:18:06,080
Speaker 1: in other words, in one month, the market had lost

310
00:18:06,160 --> 00:18:11,280
Speaker 1: nearly one trillion dollars, or if you prefer a real

311
00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:15,080
Speaker 1: world scenario. During the two thousand Super Bowl, there were

312
00:18:15,119 --> 00:18:19,720
Speaker 1: seventeen dot com companies that had ads that played during

313
00:18:19,800 --> 00:18:23,399
Speaker 1: that Super Bowl, and collectively those ads cost about forty

314
00:18:23,440 --> 00:18:27,040
Speaker 1: four million dollars. During the two thousand one Super Bowl,

315
00:18:27,119 --> 00:18:32,520
Speaker 1: one year later, only three dot com companies had ads

316
00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:35,680
Speaker 1: played during the Super Bowl. Most of the other companies

317
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:39,520
Speaker 1: that had advertised during the previous year didn't even exist anymore.

318
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:45,480
Speaker 1: That's how brutal this bubble bursting was. So what happened, Well,

319
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:48,040
Speaker 1: the big thing that happened was that people lost confidence

320
00:18:48,119 --> 00:18:50,560
Speaker 1: in the tech sector in general and the dot com

321
00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:53,560
Speaker 1: sector in particular. A bit of a panic began in

322
00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:56,639
Speaker 1: March two thousand when Dell and Cisco, which are two

323
00:18:56,720 --> 00:18:59,640
Speaker 1: large tech companies that had predated the dot com era

324
00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:03,960
Speaker 1: and we're large enough to weather those issues. They had

325
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:07,200
Speaker 1: been growing more organically over time than the dot com

326
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:11,240
Speaker 1: startups had, so del and Cisco would get big, but

327
00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:13,800
Speaker 1: they got big at a slower pace. These startups would

328
00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:18,000
Speaker 1: suddenly just inflate to huge size out of nowhere. Well,

329
00:19:18,359 --> 00:19:23,600
Speaker 1: del and Cisco both gave a little bit of a scare.

330
00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:28,040
Speaker 1: Two investors they decided to UH to authorize selling a

331
00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:34,040
Speaker 1: huge amount of stock and end up being this kind

332
00:19:34,119 --> 00:19:39,560
Speaker 1: of domino effect, right, so they placed large cell orders

333
00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:43,200
Speaker 1: on their stocks. It's spooked some investors. People began to

334
00:19:43,240 --> 00:19:45,520
Speaker 1: sell off their tech stocks in general. And when you've

335
00:19:45,520 --> 00:19:47,479
Speaker 1: got a lot of people trying to sell a stock

336
00:19:47,600 --> 00:19:50,520
Speaker 1: and not a lot of people trying to buy stock,

337
00:19:51,160 --> 00:19:54,879
Speaker 1: prices began to drop. Demand had diminished. You suddenly had

338
00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:57,920
Speaker 1: people trying to dump their stock as opposed to buying

339
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,119
Speaker 1: up more. And if no one wants to buy it,

340
00:20:00,800 --> 00:20:03,880
Speaker 1: then your price goes down. If I'm selling lemonade at

341
00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:06,679
Speaker 1: at Baby Jay's lemonade stand, but I'm selling it at

342
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:09,760
Speaker 1: five bucks of glass and no one's buying a glass,

343
00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:12,639
Speaker 1: chances are I need to start lowering that price. And

344
00:20:12,640 --> 00:20:14,080
Speaker 1: it might not be until I get all the way

345
00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:17,160
Speaker 1: down to a quarter of glass before anyone even bites

346
00:20:18,520 --> 00:20:22,520
Speaker 1: or SIPs. I guess it's lemonade, so you wouldn't bite

347
00:20:22,520 --> 00:20:26,880
Speaker 1: it anyway. These startup companies, many of which have been

348
00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:30,600
Speaker 1: burning through crazy amounts of investment money, had failed to

349
00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:34,240
Speaker 1: show any signs of actually creating a viable business. Some

350
00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:37,000
Speaker 1: companies were struggling to turn a profit, and others weren't

351
00:20:37,040 --> 00:20:39,520
Speaker 1: doing much of anything as far as the average investor

352
00:20:39,560 --> 00:20:41,760
Speaker 1: could see. A lot of them were spending all that

353
00:20:41,840 --> 00:20:49,400
Speaker 1: investment money on lavish, trendy office spaces or crazy amenities,

354
00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:52,480
Speaker 1: partly in an effort to attract talent from other companies,

355
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:55,240
Speaker 1: and partly just as an act of extravagance. It was

356
00:20:55,240 --> 00:20:57,480
Speaker 1: a house of cards, and once people began to question

357
00:20:57,520 --> 00:21:00,199
Speaker 1: it and wonder if they were ever going to a

358
00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:02,840
Speaker 1: return of their investment, the whole thing began to topple.

359
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:06,639
Speaker 1: For many of those companies, the stocks they issued weren't

360
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:09,439
Speaker 1: worth the paper they were printed on. Employees who were

361
00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:12,840
Speaker 1: promised a future filled with wealth watched as their compensation

362
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:17,000
Speaker 1: shriveled up and all those shares in the company became worthless.

363
00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:20,640
Speaker 1: And many of the leaders of those companies were held

364
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:23,560
Speaker 1: up to scrutiny and some of them to ridicule. But

365
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:26,399
Speaker 1: I want to make this clear. I think most of

366
00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:29,879
Speaker 1: those folks were genuinely trying to make a viable company.

367
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:34,800
Speaker 1: There are a few m M, let's call them jackasses

368
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:39,640
Speaker 1: in the group who were boasting about having lear jets

369
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:44,119
Speaker 1: and other crazy amenities, and perhaps some of the things

370
00:21:44,119 --> 00:21:47,119
Speaker 1: that happened to them were well, let's just say they

371
00:21:47,119 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 1: are probably people who were experiencing a sense of shot

372
00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:54,040
Speaker 1: in freuda as it was unfolding. Uh. And in some

373
00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:57,080
Speaker 1: cases they were just trying their best, but they didn't

374
00:21:57,080 --> 00:22:00,120
Speaker 1: have a business plan that was very solid, or they's

375
00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:03,240
Speaker 1: got too much money too quickly, and that paradoxically led

376
00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:06,600
Speaker 1: them down to their eventual collapse. Now we're gonna talk

377
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:09,560
Speaker 1: about some specific companies and what happened to them in

378
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:12,560
Speaker 1: our next section, but first let's take a quick break

379
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:22,480
Speaker 1: and thank our sponsor. Alright, so that was the super

380
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,200
Speaker 1: fast version of the dot com bubble bursting. Now let's

381
00:22:25,200 --> 00:22:27,240
Speaker 1: talk about some of the companies and founders that were

382
00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:31,359
Speaker 1: involved in this mess. One of those companies was Broadcast

383
00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:36,399
Speaker 1: dot Com. So the history of this company goes back

384
00:22:36,600 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: aways before there was a web actually, So back in

385
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:44,280
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Cameron Christopher Jabe. It seems

386
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 1: goes by Chris Jabe these days, and I may even

387
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:49,360
Speaker 1: be mispronouncing that it's j A E. B. If we're

388
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 1: doing it as old English, it would be jab. Anyway,

389
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:56,640
Speaker 1: he felt he could really solve a problem that sports

390
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 1: fans run into, and that problem is that if you're traveling,

391
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:01,720
Speaker 1: you might not have any way to tune into a

392
00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:06,320
Speaker 1: station and listen to your home team whoopop on. I

393
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 1: don't know. Let's say it's the New York Yankees, because

394
00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:11,560
Speaker 1: they deserve it. It's my fantasy, let me live it.

395
00:23:12,280 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 1: Jeb's initial approach was to ask various sports teams if

396
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:18,879
Speaker 1: he could get permission to broadcast the events of games

397
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:22,000
Speaker 1: to an audience, and he found an early investor in

398
00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:25,080
Speaker 1: Mark Cuban. Now by this time we were talking about

399
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:28,399
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, and Mark Cuban had apparently been thinking

400
00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:32,840
Speaker 1: about a similar idea for a while, and Cuban effectively

401
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:36,119
Speaker 1: took control of the company in return for his investment.

402
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 1: Uh he brought on a guy named Todd Wagner who

403
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: had attended Indiana University as did Mark Cuban, and Wagner

404
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:46,840
Speaker 1: held a law degree and was a c p A.

405
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 1: And in they formed a company called audio Net. Three

406
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:56,560
Speaker 1: years later they would rebrand it as broadcast dot com.

407
00:23:56,680 --> 00:23:59,240
Speaker 1: The core of the business remained this idea of streaming

408
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:03,400
Speaker 1: games over the Internet, or really not streaming a game

409
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:07,920
Speaker 1: so much as streaming the commentary about a game over

410
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:14,080
Speaker 1: the internet. In the company went public and stock prices skyrocketed.

411
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:19,879
Speaker 1: In Yahoo acquired Broadcast dot Com in a stock purchase

412
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: deal that was valued at five point seven billion dollars.

413
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: These days, it's often cited as one of the worst

414
00:24:28,359 --> 00:24:31,639
Speaker 1: acquisitions of all time now around at that that point,

415
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:33,399
Speaker 1: in fact, we did a tech Stuff episode where we

416
00:24:33,440 --> 00:24:36,680
Speaker 1: talked about this. Around then, there were about a half

417
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: million users on broadcast dot com and they, you know who,

418
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 1: spent five point seven billion dollars in stock, So it

419
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: essentially worked out to being ten thousand dollars per user

420
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,360
Speaker 1: of broadcast dot Com. So yeah, who could have done

421
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: the same thing by just going to everyone who had

422
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 1: a Broadcast dot com active account and cutting them a

423
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 1: check for ten grand and they would have spend the

424
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: same amount of money ten dollars. I guess if I

425
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:05,679
Speaker 1: were a user of broadcast dot Com, I would have

426
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: felt really flattered that I was valued so highly well.

427
00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:12,880
Speaker 1: Cubans sold off his Yahoo shares, or most of them,

428
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 1: and he secured himself as a billionaire. Todd Wagner also

429
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,760
Speaker 1: became a billionaire, but he would stay on with Yahoo

430
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: until the year two thousand and he turned down an

431
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: opportunity to become the chief operating officer of Yahoo. Jab,

432
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: the founder of the feast, received a relatively paltry fifty

433
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:34,880
Speaker 1: million dollars. So even though it was his idea, and

434
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:39,400
Speaker 1: he often is overlooked in discussions about broadcast dot com.

435
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: If you talk about broadcast dot com, you talk about founders,

436
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: it's almost always Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner. They almost

437
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:49,439
Speaker 1: never mentioned Jab, who had actually come up with the

438
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: idea in the first place. As for the company, even

439
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: with y'all whose considerable wealth and size behind it, it

440
00:25:55,520 --> 00:26:00,200
Speaker 1: never really turned into anything profitable, and so in two

441
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: thousand two, Yeahoo effectively shut it all down. Mark Cuban

442
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: is still an investor. He's also the owner of the

443
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: Dallas Mavericks, so he's been doing all right. You might

444
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 1: have seen him on Shark Tank. He also tends to

445
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:17,400
Speaker 1: speak out on matters of political significance. Todd Wagner has

446
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:21,199
Speaker 1: become known as an entertainment investor. He has interests in

447
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: several television and movie ventures, and he's also the head

448
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 1: of a large charitable foundation. So that's pretty cool. And

449
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:30,440
Speaker 1: asked for the guy who came up with the idea

450
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: of Chris Well, he became the owner of a company

451
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: called common Ground Kawaii for nine years, and according to

452
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 1: his LinkedIn profile, that was a sustainable resource center established

453
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: to make it easier to gain access to education, products

454
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: and services that enhance the environment, build community, and support

455
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: the local economy. It's pretty cool thinking about making a change,

456
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: using his money to help make a positive influence on

457
00:26:56,320 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: his community. And in twenty sixteen, he founded a new company,

458
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: all the b Well Media Company, and he said, I

459
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: envision a uniquely organic, secure health and information service that

460
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 1: allows people to create improved relationships between themselves, their community,

461
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:17,360
Speaker 1: and the environment. And he's living in Kawaii, Hawaii, which

462
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,960
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. I've been to Kawai and I love it,

463
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:23,640
Speaker 1: So if he ever wants me out there to talk

464
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 1: about his company, I am willing to make that trip.

465
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: But moreover, I think it's really cool that he has

466
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:33,440
Speaker 1: taken his money and while he might have been essentially

467
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: written out the history books in large part with this

468
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: whole story, he really was trying to create a solution

469
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: to a problem. And then after all of that, he's

470
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: still working to better his community. I think that's admirable.

471
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 1: Although Broadcast dot Com itself obviously didn't stick around, so

472
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: they were both both Mark Cuban, actually all Mark Cuban

473
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: and Christi Yap. We're both essentially out of the picture

474
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: by the time Broadcast dot Com fizzled out, and recently

475
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: Fortune reported that Cuban is interested in buying back the

476
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: broadcast dot Com brand. This was from some articles that

477
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 1: were written in mid August, and according to Barbed Darrow,

478
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:20,880
Speaker 1: who wrote a piece for Fortune, Cuban wants to use

479
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 1: the domain as the home of a private chat app

480
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: that leaves no trace on servers of messages between people.

481
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:30,399
Speaker 1: And if you were to use the app, if you

482
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: ever wanted to keep a record of what was said,

483
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 1: you could do screen grabs, but they would end up

484
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: blurring out the names of the people who were involved

485
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: in the conversation, so everyone would become anonymous in the

486
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: screen grabs. During the actual conversation, you know who you're

487
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 1: talking to, but the records would not leave a trail

488
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: to follow. And you can imagine in this day and

489
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:58,120
Speaker 1: age why people would be interested in such a piece

490
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: of technology. With some governments, including the United States, occasionally

491
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: getting a little nosy about who is saying what and

492
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: to whom, uh, it's an issue and if you are

493
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: criticizing our current administration, they seem to take a big

494
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: interest in that, which is somewhat worrisome when you live

495
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: in a nation that is supposed to be valuing free speech.

496
00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:25,719
Speaker 1: So this is kind of a way to train and

497
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 1: ensure free speech by removing the ability for other parties

498
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: to look into it in the first place. All right,

499
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 1: we're gonna stick with the b companies here. We just

500
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 1: talked about Broadcast dot com, but now we're going to

501
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: talk about a different company called Boo dot com. B

502
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: o O as in what a ghost says when it

503
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 1: wants to scurre you. This was an e commerce company

504
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: that was all about selling branded fashion apparel, mostly in

505
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: the sports and active activewear categories. It was founded by

506
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 1: Ernst mom Shton, Casa Leander, and Patrick Headland, three Swedish

507
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs who founded the company in nine And while I

508
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: had problems with Jab's name or Jabe, I definitely butchered

509
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: all three of their names, so my apologies to them.

510
00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:20,720
Speaker 1: Malmstein and Leander had previously founded an online book store

511
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 1: called Bocus dot com b O k u s and

512
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: then they were able to sell that for Bouckoo's of cash.

513
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 1: They became millionaires, and Boo dot Com was their follow up.

514
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: They decided they wanted to try a new approach and

515
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: create a new company. They launched the site in nineteen.

516
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: Within a year it would collapse. So it goes up

517
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 1: in ninety nine and comes down in two thousand, having

518
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: burned through more than a hundred thirty million dollars in

519
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: investment money in the process. So that's more than ten

520
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: million dollars a month. So what went wrong? Well, part

521
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: of it was just plain old hubris. The founders wanted

522
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: to create an instant Amazon like service, but for fashion

523
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:07,600
Speaker 1: instead of for books. Remember Amazon started off as simply

524
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: a bookstore online and it gradually grew into everything. But

525
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: back in the day, it was a bookstore. So they

526
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 1: wanted to do the same thing that Amazon did, except

527
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,520
Speaker 1: they wanted to go with sports fashion. However, uh, they

528
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: did it a different way. So they wanted to have

529
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: that global presence. But Amazon got to its size organically,

530
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: it grew. It started originally as a regional company, and

531
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: it grew into a global company over time. Boo dot

532
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 1: Com kind of wanted to skip all of that and

533
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: go straight to the global company, part rail of the gate,

534
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:43,239
Speaker 1: so you could say they bit off more than they

535
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: could chew. The company had more than three fifty employees

536
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: at its height, with offices in London, New York, Paris, Munich,

537
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: and Stockholm. They had all these moving pieces in play,

538
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: but they hadn't secured something important, namely the participation of brands.

539
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:01,959
Speaker 1: As it turns out that's really important if you want

540
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: to sell branded clothing in your online store. The brands

541
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: had established distribution lines that weren't easily disrupted or added to.

542
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: So the brands didn't really want to get involved in

543
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: a company that was marketing itself as a way to

544
00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: save money by buying online, because then your premium brand

545
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 1: might look like it's a discount brand, and that's not

546
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: great as far as perception goes. Plus, there were all

547
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: these relationships they had with brick and mortar retail stores

548
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to alienate their partners by working

549
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: with this internet startup. So boo dot com was having

550
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: some issues just getting stuff that they could sell. In addition,

551
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: the founders were allegedly unable to answer potential investor questions,

552
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: important ones such as how many people do you expect

553
00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: to visit your site, how many of those people who

554
00:32:56,160 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: visit will convert to customers? How much must each cuss

555
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 1: tim or spend for the business to be profitable, and

556
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 1: so on, And when they were unable to provide answers

557
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 1: to those questions, investors began to back away. So when

558
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: the site launched, it had a point to five percent

559
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: conversion rate. That means one quarter of one percent of

560
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 1: all the people who visited the website actually used it

561
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: to purchase something that's not great. So you had this

562
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: service that brands were reluctant to work with for fear

563
00:33:29,080 --> 00:33:31,720
Speaker 1: of alienating the retail partners, not to mention the stigma

564
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: being associated with a bargain shopping experience. You had investors

565
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: who had lost confidence in the team, and you had

566
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 1: incredibly lackluster conversion rates. The website designed didn't do a

567
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: many favors either. You can actually see pictures of the

568
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:48,719
Speaker 1: old boo dot com website. It was pretty jankee. At

569
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: one point, Maumston said, unless we raised twenty million dollars

570
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: by midnight, boo dot com is dead. Well they failed

571
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: to raise twenty million, and bood dot com died. In retrospect,

572
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: you could say it was a classic case of reaching

573
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: far beyond your grasp, but of course that's a lot

574
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: easier to say in hindsight. These days, Ernst Mouston is

575
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: the CEO of the luxury clothing line Laura Bohnk, named

576
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 1: after the company's creative director. There's also a website bearing

577
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:22,760
Speaker 1: his name that was put up by what I assume

578
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: is a disgruntled former employee, which is yikes, y'all, m

579
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: I'm not going to share that you r L. But

580
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: it's easy enough to find if you do a search

581
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:38,240
Speaker 1: for his name, and it ain't great anyway. Mouston also

582
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:40,760
Speaker 1: wrote a book about the experience of Boo dot COM's

583
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: failure and called it Boo Hoo. Kazia Leander, whose name

584
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: I knew, I'm butchering, went on to become a consultant

585
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: and lecturer for a while, then became a co founder

586
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: of a branding agency called Studio Berg. Later, Leander became

587
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: the produce certain director for a marketing and production agency

588
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:05,320
Speaker 1: called Vision and Art, leaving that job in two thousand

589
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 1: and fourteen. And these days Leander works with Burga Bruke,

590
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 1: a beverage company that makes organic drinks. They look tasty.

591
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind trying one. Now. I never used Boo

592
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: dot com and I was never a customer broadcast dot com.

593
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: So I don't know what my value is, but I

594
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 1: bet it's not ten thousand dollars. But there is one

595
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 1: service I did use in the dot com days, I think.

596
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I definitely used a service like this one

597
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: around that time, but the one I used might not

598
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: have been this one. It definitely went out of business

599
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 1: because I had to stop using it, and I was

600
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 1: very upset. But my memory ain't what I used to be. Folks,

601
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: get off my lawn. The business I referred to by

602
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 1: the way as web van. Web Van launched in nine

603
00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:58,959
Speaker 1: and it was essentially an online grocery store. So web

604
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:03,240
Speaker 1: Van created warehouses, refrigerated warehouses where they could store tons

605
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: of different food. You would go onto the web band site,

606
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: you would pick the food you wanted and order it,

607
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: pay for it, and then it would get delivered to

608
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: your door. You just pop right there on the web

609
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: page and do it all there is great and you

610
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 1: would get you know, the price of the items plus

611
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:21,880
Speaker 1: a delivery fee. It would all be wrapped up. Probably

612
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like services that are available in many

613
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: parts of the world today, but back then it was

614
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,359
Speaker 1: a pretty much a brand new business idea. And at

615
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 1: that time, my wife and I were living in Atlanta,

616
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: and neither of us had a car, and so a

617
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,800
Speaker 1: trip to the grocery store involved an hour each way

618
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: on public transportation. So you're talking a two hour round

619
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: trip plus however long it takes you in the actual store,

620
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 1: Plus you have to carry all that stuff on public transportation.

621
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:50,360
Speaker 1: And since you had to carry it, it meant that

622
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 1: you were trying to go more frequently, so you didn't

623
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 1: have to do big, big trips. It was a lot

624
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 1: of hassle. So this was a really welcome service in

625
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,799
Speaker 1: my household. Too bad it wasn't meant to be. You

626
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:05,880
Speaker 1: wouldn't know from the heights the company reached, though, according

627
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: to the next Web at its peak, web Van was

628
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: worth one point two billion dollars. Louis Borders founded the company.

629
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 1: That's the same Borders who created the Border's bookstore chain,

630
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: and web Van initially launched as a San Francisco area service,

631
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: so it was regional and it did well, and that's

632
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:32,840
Speaker 1: what inspired Borders to expand this to a nationwide company.

633
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:36,439
Speaker 1: It went public in n and like Boo dot Com,

634
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,720
Speaker 1: it attempted to grow at an incredible rate. They really

635
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,799
Speaker 1: tried to expand rapidly. They tried to make web van

636
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: a fully operating service in multiple locations all at the

637
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 1: same time, and it turned out to be an unsustainable strategy.

638
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: The company bought warehouses across the US where else is

639
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: cost about thirty million dollars each, and it bought out

640
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 1: a competitor in the form of Home Grocer and burned

641
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: through about a billion dollars. Investors could tell things weren't

642
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,479
Speaker 1: going well. The company's stock price fell from its high

643
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: of thirty dollars per share down to an unbelievable six

644
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: cents per share. Yikes. In two thousand one, there was

645
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: just no more cash to burn through, and the company

646
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 1: laid off two thousand employees and then faced liquidation. So

647
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: what happened to Louis Borders, the guy who founded it. Well,

648
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 1: the Borders bookstore chain closed down in two thousand eleven,

649
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:33,439
Speaker 1: so that was another blow to Borders. These days, he's

650
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: heading up another go at the home delivery market with

651
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: hd S Global and HDS stands for Home Delivery Service.

652
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: So more than a decade later, he's going at it again.

653
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: He's trying to get another business up where it's a

654
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: delivery service including groceries to customers. Now there's a new challenge.

655
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: There's several competing services, many of them regional in nature,

656
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: that already provide these kinds of services that HDS is

657
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: interested in providing. Borders Louis Borders. That is has UH

658
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:10,720
Speaker 1: secured a lot of investment partners, and he tells HDS

659
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:15,640
Speaker 1: Global as quote the first robotic, highly automated end to

660
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 1: end fulfillment system end quote. So we'll see how that

661
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:23,280
Speaker 1: turns out. Now. One of the big companies that crashed

662
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 1: in the dot com bubble was called Excite e x

663
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 1: C I t E like broadcast dot com. Excites roots

664
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: date back before the bubble really began to inflate. It

665
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 1: was a search engine and it was originally created by

666
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:39,800
Speaker 1: a group of Stanford students, including a guy named Joe Krausse,

667
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 1: but a lot of others worked on it too. Way

668
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 1: back in they built this search engine and at the

669
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:51,359
Speaker 1: time they called it Architect. In nine after receiving three

670
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 1: million dollars in investments, the service rebranded itself as Excite.

671
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:00,720
Speaker 1: Well in nineteen six they decided to bring on George

672
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: Bell to become the CEO of this new company. However,

673
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 1: George Bell was a documentary filmmaker who had no experience

674
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: leading a dot com company. Bell's first move was to

675
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:15,359
Speaker 1: gobble up some competition in a couple of acquisitions. Uh

676
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: the Exite ended up buying another search engine called Magellan

677
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: and another one called web Crawler. I actually remember web Crawler.

678
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,720
Speaker 1: Web Crawler is what I used before Google came along.

679
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:30,840
Speaker 1: I was a big web Crawler user back in the day.

680
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 1: The company then later went public, followed by another acquisition

681
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: in the form of net Bought. They bought net Bought

682
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: for thirty five million dollars in nine and then in

683
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:45,160
Speaker 1: nine Bell made what some people would later consider to

684
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest mistakes in technology history. He

685
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 1: turned down the opportunity to buy a little company called Google. Now,

686
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: the story that everyone tells is that the asking price

687
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: Google had was originally one million dollars and then later

688
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:06,839
Speaker 1: was knocked down to seven thousand dollars, but Bell refused

689
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: to bite, and we know what happened with Google's right

690
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:14,759
Speaker 1: there in the alphabet. To be fair to Bell, though,

691
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: he says that part of the deal required Excite to

692
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: replace their technology with Google's tech that if they did

693
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: infect agree to buy Google, part of that agreement would

694
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:30,319
Speaker 1: require them to strip out the Excite search engine and

695
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: switch to the Google Technology search engine. But Bell felt

696
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: that this would cause rifts in his company. I mean,

697
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,160
Speaker 1: he had teams who had built Excites technology, and he

698
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 1: was worried that if he forced this change, he would

699
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: alienate those employees. According to Bell, that is so it

700
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: wasn't just the Bell didn't foresee the impact of Google.

701
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: He was looking out for his team. He didn't want

702
00:41:55,480 --> 00:42:01,359
Speaker 1: to create tension in the company culture. On September twenty one,

703
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: two thousand, George Bell stepped down as the CEO of Excite,

704
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: and the stock price had dropped more than a hundred

705
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:11,879
Speaker 1: dollars per share. In fact, that I lost about nine

706
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 1: of its value over the previous year. By the end

707
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 1: of two thousand one, the stocks were down to a

708
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 1: dollar per share, and the company ran low on funds

709
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: and eventually declared bankruptcy. George Bell would go on to

710
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 1: join General Catalyst Partners, which is a venture capital firm,

711
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 1: so he's an investor. Joe Krauss, one of these Stanford students,

712
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: who helped build Excite, is now a general partner at

713
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:43,839
Speaker 1: g V. G V started out as Google Ventures. It's

714
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 1: a small world. Joe Krause goes into working with Google

715
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:50,919
Speaker 1: and now it's been spun off. It's another investment firm

716
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 1: that looks to tech and health sectors for an interesting

717
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:59,000
Speaker 1: and compelling businesses to invest in. Um. Now we're gonna

718
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: take another quick break, but when we come back, I've

719
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: got one more company I want to talk about in

720
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: this episode, and then some thoughts to tie things together

721
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:11,839
Speaker 1: before we look to the next episode. So let's take

722
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: a quick break and thank our sponsor. Alright, so we're

723
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,960
Speaker 1: down to the last company for this first section, and

724
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 1: I figure it was time for one more company, uh

725
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: in this half In our next episode, all there is

726
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 1: a few more stories of companies that went belly up

727
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:34,240
Speaker 1: in the crash. But now let's in this talk with

728
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,880
Speaker 1: a conversation about pets dot com. And if you watched

729
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,920
Speaker 1: television in the late nineties, you probably saw the mascot

730
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 1: for pets dot Com at some point. It was a

731
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: sock puppet dog frequently holding a little puppet sized microphone

732
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 1: with the pets dot Com logo on it and It

733
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: all started with Greg McLemore, who is an entrepreneur, who

734
00:43:56,680 --> 00:44:01,279
Speaker 1: in registered the domain name pets dot com, which is

735
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:05,360
Speaker 1: incredibly intelligent to do because that's a top level domain

736
00:44:05,480 --> 00:44:09,720
Speaker 1: name and it's incredibly valuable. It's it's easy to remember,

737
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:12,359
Speaker 1: and it's very easy to direct people to it. And

738
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: in n when McLamore got it, he didn't really have

739
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 1: a plan for it. He just thought that it was

740
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: going to be valuable, so he bought it and sat

741
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: on it. He also had a web design firm technically

742
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: still does called web Magic, it's still a thing, and

743
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: in web Magic launched the site pets dot com and

744
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 1: it sold pet supplies and pet food online. Julie Wainwright

745
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:40,879
Speaker 1: would become the CEO of the company in nine after

746
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:45,240
Speaker 1: McLamore sold it off. Now, the story most people tell

747
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: is that pets dot com eight through its money by

748
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: trying to attract customers through deals that were not profitable

749
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: to the company, as in the company was actually selling

750
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: stuff for less than it costs them to get that stuff.

751
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,800
Speaker 1: So let's say it cost him twenty bucks to buy

752
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: this bag of food from a of company, a manufacturing company,

753
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: and then they sold it for eighteen bucks, and so

754
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: they were losing two dollars per sale on that particular

755
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:18,399
Speaker 1: hypothetical situation. It was also known for its ad campaigns,

756
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: which featured that sock puppet I just mentioned, and those

757
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: were wildly popular, and they were also wildly expensive. They

758
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: spent more than a million dollars on a Super Bowl

759
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:33,160
Speaker 1: ad for example. In the company spent nearly twelve million

760
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 1: dollars on advertising while bringing in about six hundred thousand

761
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: bucks in revenue. So less than a million in revenue

762
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: but twelve million in advertising. That's unsustainable. So the general

763
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: story is that the company was selling stuff for less

764
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: than it costs them to get it and spending way

765
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 1: too much on advertising. But Waynewright says that's not the

766
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 1: real story. In a letter she wrote to Business Insider,

767
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 1: she said that the real trouble was an infrastructure and

768
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:04,239
Speaker 1: that there were no plug in play solutions that could

769
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 1: support a business that needed to grow that quickly in

770
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:11,239
Speaker 1: order to become a nationwide or global site, and rather

771
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: than using an integrated cloud based approach, which didn't exist

772
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: in two thousand, the company had to employ lots of

773
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:20,919
Speaker 1: I T professionals to run the site to make sure

774
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:22,759
Speaker 1: it didn't go down. If it did go down, to

775
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,720
Speaker 1: get it back up and running, to oversee the UH,

776
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 1: the actual inventory infrastructure, et cetera. And on top of that,

777
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: they had a lot of competitors out there on the market.

778
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:35,279
Speaker 1: There were a lot of pets supply companies that were

779
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 1: springing up online, and pets dot Com acquired a couple

780
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 1: of them, but there were others that were popping up

781
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: as well, and they were offering similar products, sometimes at

782
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: similar prices, and they all had similar names, which meant

783
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: that your customer base is divided among all these different companies.

784
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:54,360
Speaker 1: It was a tough market to work in, and so

785
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:57,400
Speaker 1: Wainwright came to a conclusion as the company began to

786
00:46:57,520 --> 00:47:00,439
Speaker 1: run out of money. She said it would make more

787
00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:04,040
Speaker 1: sense to shut down the company and return the money

788
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:07,720
Speaker 1: to shareholders, rather than to just keep on going until

789
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:11,239
Speaker 1: you were forced to declare bankruptcy. The business plan at

790
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: that time was unsupportable. They really needed several years of

791
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 1: operation in order to start turning around a profit, but

792
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:20,919
Speaker 1: they just didn't have the operating cash to be able

793
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 1: to do that. So it made more sense to return

794
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: investments rather than push on until the inevitable liquidation other

795
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 1: dot com companies around this time, we're suffering worse fates.

796
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:33,439
Speaker 1: I mean, Wainwright was looking around and she could see

797
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:36,799
Speaker 1: the web vans of the world going belly up. And

798
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 1: so this was a tough decision to cut losses and quit,

799
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:43,200
Speaker 1: but it was a tactical decision. All told, it took

800
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 1: only two hundred sixty eight days for pets dot Com

801
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 1: to go from its I p O to shutting its doors,

802
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:53,839
Speaker 1: So less than a year between when they first went

803
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 1: public and when they first had and when they had

804
00:47:56,440 --> 00:48:00,760
Speaker 1: to close up shop. Pretty crazy. Julie Wayne Right, according

805
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:03,840
Speaker 1: to Celebrity net Worth, received a severance package of around

806
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:07,360
Speaker 1: a hundred sixty five thousand dollars with a one sixty

807
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 1: five thousand bonus and a performance bonus on top of

808
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,720
Speaker 1: that of fifty thou dollars. Waynewright went on to become

809
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: the CEO of a company called The Real Real, a

810
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 1: consignment website that sells luxury items pets dot com. The

811
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: domain ended up being purchased by pet Smart for some

812
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:30,719
Speaker 1: undisclosed amount. The sock Puppet found work later on to

813
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: an auto loan company called bar None Incorporated, bought the

814
00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: rights to the sock puppet for one five thousand dollars,

815
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:43,000
Speaker 1: slapped a new logo on the microphone, and gave the

816
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: puppet a slogan, which was everybody deserves a second chance.

817
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:51,439
Speaker 1: So there's a happy ending for a sock. I love

818
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: that the sock puppet was able to find work afterwards.

819
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 1: Know where are they now? Story would be complete without

820
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 1: telling you what happened to the sock puppet. On the

821
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: next episode, I'm going to cover more companies that had

822
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:04,959
Speaker 1: their famous day in the sun back in the dot

823
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:08,239
Speaker 1: com bubble, and we'll talk about where their founders are now.

824
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: And I can end this episode by saying there are

825
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: some valuable lessons to be learned from these experiences, and

826
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,919
Speaker 1: some of those lessons only became obvious over time, such

827
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 1: as it might be a good idea to wait for

828
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 1: solutions to big infrastructure challenges before scaling up your business,

829
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 1: but at that time, those solutions didn't yet exist, and

830
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: no one was really aware of how hard it would

831
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: be to go that big that fast, or if there

832
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 1: ever would be solutions to those problems. Now. Granted, typically

833
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 1: when you encounter problems and people are able to identify them,

834
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: that's when folks start trying to think up solutions to

835
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: those problems. So maybe this was a necessary step in

836
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:48,919
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, but it really taught us

837
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: that if you want to become a big power player

838
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: in the space, it might not be the best idea

839
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: to try and tackle every single region simultaneously. It might

840
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:02,359
Speaker 1: be better to try and grow more organically so that

841
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:07,239
Speaker 1: you can build upon localized success and then scale up

842
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:09,840
Speaker 1: as you go, instead of trying to hit the ground

843
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:12,680
Speaker 1: running at a hundred miles per hour. As soon as

844
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:16,800
Speaker 1: you touch ground, it's tough to do. Another big lesson

845
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: to take to heart is that you should avoid speculation.

846
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:26,839
Speaker 1: That is, you should avoid investing in things because you

847
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: have the hope that's going to have a wild payoff

848
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: down the road. And part of the reason for that

849
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:36,160
Speaker 1: is if you do engage in that behavior, it inspires

850
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 1: other people to engage in that behavior, and pretty soon

851
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 1: you end up with a overinflated market which will eventually

852
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: correct itself, and maybe you will get out of the

853
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 1: market before it corrects itself, and maybe you'll end up

854
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: being all right. You might make a profit in the process,

855
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: but maybe you won't. Maybe you'll take a bath and

856
00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:00,319
Speaker 1: all that money you poured into this company with the

857
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 1: hopes of having these crazy returns will be gone. In

858
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: either case, there are going to be real people who

859
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 1: are affected by these companies suddenly inflating and then deflating,

860
00:51:12,120 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 1: and that's a shame. You shouldn't really be a part

861
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: of that either. If you are running a business and

862
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 1: you're looking for investment, you probably don't need those ridiculous

863
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: amounts that are being poured into these companies early on,

864
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 1: because you then have the temptation to put that money

865
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:35,320
Speaker 1: towards things that are not really important for your bottom line.

866
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:38,759
Speaker 1: You might be spending them on extravagances, and so you

867
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:41,879
Speaker 1: are not making good use of that cash. And later

868
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,000
Speaker 1: down the road, when things start to dry up, you

869
00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: have to start going to the well again and asking

870
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 1: for more investment money, which gets harder and harder to

871
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 1: do each time you have to do it. Especially if

872
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: you've already decided to go public, then you've really need

873
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 1: to have your ducks in a row. You need to

874
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: be able to explain how your company is going to

875
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:03,800
Speaker 1: make money, as opposed to just staying afloat on the

876
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: investment dollars of people who are maintaining desperate hope that

877
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:10,800
Speaker 1: they're going to see a return on that investment one day.

878
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: So these are valuable lessons and there's plenty of other

879
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,520
Speaker 1: ones we could talk about, and in our next episode

880
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:20,760
Speaker 1: will cover some of that as well. Uh, you don't

881
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: want to go and spend all your money. You don't

882
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:26,719
Speaker 1: want to go and pour money into something that's unproven,

883
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:28,799
Speaker 1: at least not a huge amount of money in it.

884
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:33,879
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to brag about how extravagant

885
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 1: your lifestyle is when you don't have a business plan.

886
00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 1: These are just basic rules that I think people need

887
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:42,239
Speaker 1: to follow, and most people do, although we still see

888
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:46,440
Speaker 1: examples of folks committing these sort of errors today, well

889
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 1: after this startup dot com bubble burst, some people argue

890
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:55,760
Speaker 1: that we're in another bubble right now with the venture

891
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 1: capital and angel investors that you see out there, which

892
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:00,440
Speaker 1: is a slightly different world than what is going on

893
00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:03,920
Speaker 1: in the dot com days. In our next episode, I

894
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,839
Speaker 1: will talk about some more of these companies, tell you

895
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:10,439
Speaker 1: what happened to them and where their executives have gone

896
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: off to. Maybe we'll chat a little bit about some

897
00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:14,719
Speaker 1: of the big companies that made it all the way

898
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,839
Speaker 1: through the dot com era and came out the other

899
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:22,759
Speaker 1: side and flourished like Google and Amazon. But if you

900
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics that I should cover on tech stuff,

901
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:28,080
Speaker 1: or you've got questions or comments, you can get in

902
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:31,279
Speaker 1: touch with me my email addresses tech stuff at how

903
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on

904
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter to handle at both of those locations.

905
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: Is tech Stuff h s W. I look forward to

906
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: hearing from you, and I'll talk to you again. Releason

907
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:51,360
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

908
00:53:51,360 --> 00:54:02,360
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com.