WEBVTT - This Is What It Was Actually Like To Live Through The Tech Bubble 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:13.640 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.560 I'm Joe Wisen and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, it's great 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.200 to have you back. Thank you, thank you. I've come 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:25.520 back refreshed and reinvigorated for another year of Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:30.600 I am extremely excited about another year of doing the 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:33.120 show with you. I was very sad to not have 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:36.479 you for the last two episodes, So yeah, I'm very 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:38.720 excited that we're back at it in the new year. No, 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.200 thank you. You know. The flip side of not doing 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:43.080 the Odd Lots Podcast with you is that I get 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:45.519 to listen to them on my own time, which is 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:48.720 something I don't do when I record them with you. Obviously, 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:52.239 good point. So that'll be my excuse when I when 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.080 I take off a few weeks. At some point, I'll 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:55.680 just say, oh, it's because I really just wanted to 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:58.920 give them a fresh listen and not hear them biased 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.880 by my own partic the patient. I'm sure that will 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.680 be the case, do you know. Obviously we talk a 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.919 lot about bubbles on the show. Last year we had 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:13.040 a whole series about various bubbles throughout history, and then 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:14.920 we had a bunch of episodes I think about bubbles 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:17.039 that weren't even part of the series. I'm sure we'll 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.959 have many more. It's just one of our recurring themes 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:24.960 for obvious reasons. Yeah, bubbles remain I think personally, probably 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.600 the most interesting phenomenon that we observe in markets, because 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:34.320 there's all this collective behavior and sort of psychology involved 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.320 in every single one. Right. I think it's like when 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:42.000 psychology takes hold to such a dominant degree and the 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.640 underlying reality of what's going on seems to exert just 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:49.240 such a minimal force in the underlying market. I think 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:52.440 that's a good way of describing it. The other interesting 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:54.920 thing about it is, of course, you never know when 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.960 a bubble is going to pop, right, because a bubble 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.840 that doesn't pop is also known is a really good 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.600 bull market. Right. It's one of these things where we 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:08.040 only can definitively say something it's a bubble in the aftermath. Yes, 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:12.600 all bubbles are retrospective in nature. Well put, So, you know, 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.000 the thing is, we talked a lot about these from 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:17.960 a sort of like you know, market perspective, like what 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.360 are the signs that something is in a bubble and 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.400 what are price movements that suggest something is in a bubble, 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:27.040 and you know, that is certainly one way to examine it. 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.639 But what we haven't done is much is talk about, 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.040 like what it's like to actually live your life through 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.800 a bubble, the perspective of a person who is just 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.080 sort of right in the middle of it, someone right 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.640 on the inside, as opposed to a speculator. Right. I 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.280 really like this idea because it gets again to that 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:50.240 behavioral aspect of bubbles. How do people actually behave and 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:53.960 live when they are going through this kind of episode. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.440 So today I'm very excited We're going to be uh 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.680 talking with our colleague Dash Bennett. He works with us 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:04.800 here in Bloomberg. He's an editor, he does social media 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.440 for us, he does a bunch of other stuff. We 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:10.720 both worked with him for many years. And what's interesting 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.000 and why I'm excited about talking to Dash is that 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.880 he lived through the dot com bubble. Like so all 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:18.720 this stuff that we talked about people are trading it 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.960 in the stocks. He was actually working for one of 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:27.400 these companies whose stock went completely insane and then totally imploded. Right. 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.359 And the way this podcast is coming about is we 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.960 were having a sort of casual conversation on our internal 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:38.200 messaging system, and Dash started saying some really interesting and 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.760 slightly outrageous things about what his whole experience was like, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.320 and we thought, we need to dig into the details 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:49.360 of this right exactly. So, without further ado, Dash Bennett, 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:51.480 thank you very much for joining us. Thank you good 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:56.680 to be here. So let's get started with your history. 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:01.000 Tell us where you were in nine what so we 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:02.800 we already set it up. You were working for one 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:06.280 of the companies that were sort of most emblematic of 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.160 the dot com era. What was the company, how did 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:12.120 you join them, and what were you doing for them? Yeah, 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:14.520 it's kind of a became a legendary story of the 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:18.880 dot com bubble bursting. So at the end ofning of 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:21.200 two thousand, I was actually living in New York and 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:23.040 I had oppen out of college. Long I was like 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.239 trying to become a writer and it wasn't going very well. 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:28.080 And then a friend of mine from high school, who 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:29.440 was he went to the same high schools, maybe he 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.840 was a few years older, emailed me out of the 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:34.160 blue and said, hey, we're looking for writers. I worked 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:36.320 for this company excited Home, which I had never heard of. 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:38.719 I sort of knew what Excite was because that was 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:42.080 the big web portal, like a big rival to Yahoo. 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:44.920 It was like a second tier Yahoo. Yeah. So about 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.080 a year earlier, at the beginning of ninety nine, it 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:50.840 merged with at Home, which was a broadband I s 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:56.640 P basically and where they sold internet connections through cable companies, 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:58.440 and they had separate deals with the cable companies. Now 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:00.720 it's all run by the cable companies back and at 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:02.359 Home was its own thing. So they merge and that 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:04.200 was a huge thing at the beginning of ninety nine, 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:07.080 and their stock went through the roof. So they had 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.880 all this money, and so they started creating content teams 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.760 to create web content for their portal that would be 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.760 exclusive to at Home. And so my friend had been 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.000 working there for a few months and he was like, 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.400 I'm writing about sports. I know you know about sports. 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:23.080 We need people, why don't you come out here. So 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.560 since I was looking for work, so they flew me 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:27.520 out there and put me up for two weeks as 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.920 a test as like an interview, which was crazy. So 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.800 that's already crazy, the fact that they two weeks for 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:36.960 an Yeah, me, a person who had at that time 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.520 had no Byelines. Had no experience as a paid professional writer, 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:42.560 so that, yeah, they flew me out there. They gave 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:44.599 me like a two week tryout, basically hired me as 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:47.000 a contractor. It went really well, so then they hired 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.760 me full time. So again this just give you more 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:51.480 sense of like how much money is playing around. First 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:52.640 of all, they were paying me a salary that I 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:55.039 never thought I would make at that stage of my life. 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.040 But then they flew me out to their office was 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:00.400 in Redwood City, California, which is just south the Sound Cisco. 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.719 They put me up for thirty days in a temporary housing. 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:06.640 They got me a rental car for thirty days, They 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.120 hired a broker to help me find an apartment. They 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:11.360 paid for all of that. So that was just sort 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:13.680 of the first sign that this company has a lot 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.320 of money and they're spending it very quickly. And the 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:18.080 team I was on was growing. They were adding people 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.160 all the time. There was about at its peak was 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:24.200 about thirty people of writers, web designers, artists, all working 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:26.680 to just create this sort of like little mini newsroom 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.840 inside this technology company. So two things on that when 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.720 you heard about this company and you heard about the position, 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.159 were you thinking at all that this was a sort 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:40.240 of risky venture. And um, was there any sense that 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:44.280 you were working for a technology or a dot com 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:46.839 company or did you just think this is a sort 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:50.560 of run of the mill content provider. No, it very 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.000 much had the like all the stereotypical traits of like 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:58.240 a dot com phenomenon thing where we had a slide 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.560 in our office, one of those like that's it went 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:02.800 from the second floor down to the first floor. You know, 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:04.440 when I showed up at the office, it was very 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.360 clear that it had It had all those like things 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.480 you always hear about. There was foosball table and ping 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.000 pong tables, and there was free food everywhere. When I 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:13.880 first started, there was you know, they brought in lunch 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.239 once a week every Wednesday, we got a free everyone 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:18.120 our team got a free lunch. And there were vending 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.400 machines all over the offices but they were all free. 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:23.760 So all the sodas and snacks, and we had bagels 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.720 every morning, and so it didn't feel like a real company, 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.600 but it also didn't feel like this was the thing. 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:31.800 We were just trying to get as much as we 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:33.920 could before it all fell apart. At the time when 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:35.560 I started. It was very much like this is the 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.360 future of the Internet, This is the future of the world. 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:40.960 That's my memory of it too. I mean I wasn't 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:43.760 working for any dot com at the time. I wasn't 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:45.520 I didn't even have a job, But I remember like 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.360 at the time, it didn't feel like, oh, this is crazy, 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.760 it's about to end. It felt more like this is 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.760 the future. Like everyone believed like this is the new economy. 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.960 We were in a new year of prosperity, businesses of 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:03.360 the future or going to have this sort of freewheeling vibe. 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.200 So in retrospect you look at the slide and you say, oh, 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.200 well that was obvious excess. But in that moment, it's like, no, 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:11.280 the office of the future will be this fun place 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.440 to play around. Yeah it was. It was. There were 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.680 no cubicles, it was very much open off and a 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:17.760 lot of those things you still see today as like 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:20.400 the hallmark of a young, exciting company. It's all the 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:22.160 same things they were doing twenty years ago. We have 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:24.239 an open office here Bloomberg, and we have a great 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.320 snack bar. Sadly, we do not have a slide from 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:31.720 the would be Laura, right, that's our one area of restraints. 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.200 But this gets to one of the big lessons that 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:36.959 we learned from our Bubble series, which is that every 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:40.960 bubble comes with a convincing story that you have to 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:44.040 believe in. So Dash, I know you mentioned it already, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.040 but could you maybe just expound a little bit on 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:51.840 what the story was for excite, Like what exactly the 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:56.920 promise was way back in early two thousand's. I've been 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:58.400 thinking about a lot, knowing I was going to come 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:00.560 on here, trying to remember back to the days of 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.240 what was going on there. And what I keep coming 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:06.160 back to is that so many of these companies and 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:09.400 ours that especially, they were trying to create a model 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.360 for like how you would provide internet to people, and 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.040 that model still exists today and it's actually the dominant model, 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:17.120 but they were I don't know if it was because 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.800 they were too early, or you know, they couldn't expand 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:21.760 too much, or you know, or people were expecting too 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.720 much too soon because of all the hype. But basically 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.680 at Home was a broadband provider. They hooked people. You know, 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:29.520 you paid forty dollars a month, they gave you a modem, 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:32.640 they hooked you up to the Internet and they decided 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.160 that well, but like a O L where you were 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.079 in this when you dialed up to a O L. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.600 You were in this like their environment and their browser 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:41.679 and all that. They were trying to do the same thing. 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:43.880 But for broadband, which was still broad and was still 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:45.679 relatively knew that and not a lot of people had. 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.600 Most people were still dial up cable Internet was very 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.480 expensive and most places you simply couldn't get it. That 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:53.280 is a good point. It's like, in a way, they 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:55.920 were just way too early, because if you think about 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.520 even the media, what we're seeing in media today, where 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.960 of an entity like Comcast, this huge infrastructure provider, but 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:08.240 also which makes incredible content investments at the same time, 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.719 it does sound like the excited mom. That's what they were, 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:13.880 That's what that was. The idea was they bought Excite, 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:15.400 which was the port because at the time that's how 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.080 people got an Internet was portals. It was a O L. Yahoo, 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:20.400 Those were our big competitors. So they're like, we'll buy it, 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.240 will buy our own portal, we'll stick them together. Now 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:25.959 we have everyone in this contained universe. So they come 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:27.679 to our site, they do all their shopping, they do 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.160 all their web browsing, we can serve them ads, we 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.400 can also sell them things, and then we're also on 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.800 top of that, we're making a month that they paid. 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.720 Again real quickly before I forget to ask what month 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:40.880 did you start, because you know, thinking about the timeline 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:43.320 of all this, we know the bubble peaked in March 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:45.440 two thousand, but when did you started? Excited? That's I 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:47.240 think I started in March two thousand. It was either 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.160 February March of two thousand it was, and it was 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:54.520 right after two tho. You started right now, Yeah, I 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:56.480 was like I right at the peak of the ball. 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.280 But about a year earlier was when there happened. Stock 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.679 was the stock was up somewhere around a hundred, and 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.320 they're already starting to be problems under the surface, because 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:09.280 when I started a year later, it was down to 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:13.640 like thirty interesting thirty or forty. So you mentioned the 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.440 merger just then. I think this was part of this 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.160 thing that went wrong for the company, right. They just 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:22.000 spent a ton of money on mergers, and there was 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.360 this frenzy at the time everyone wanted to grab market share. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.480 Walk us through what that was like living it from 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:35.360 a corporate perspective. Yeah, so the merger obviously brought in 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.000 a ton of new cash to the company, is my 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.120 understanding of it. And they kind of did go on 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:43.200 a huge spending spree, not just hiring more employees of 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.560 their own, but also sometime in ninety nine, shortly after 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:48.880 the merger, it became a kind of legendary thing. They 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:53.439 bought a company called Blue Mountain Arts. It was billion 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.280 dollar greeting carcase there was online greeting card company to 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.439 basically just email little animations to your friends of like 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.840 happy birth. I want to say, my dad uses Blue 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.400 Mountain Greeting Cards system to this day, and he uses 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:11.280 it as a replacement for email, so all his email 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:14.640 messages to me basically come in the form of electronic cards. 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:18.240 I hate this company. Dash Yeah, they still exist, but 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:20.679 excite paid. I looked it up. It was like eight 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:24.880 hundred and fifty million dollar deal and like million dollars 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:28.040 in cash. I have to say, like, I remember that deal, 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:30.160 and I know we're like, oh, at the time, it 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:33.240 all seemed normal, But I do remember distinctly thinking like 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:36.680 even amidst all this euphoria, thinking that it's like this 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.439 seems a little weird, Like that was kind that was 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:41.640 like the first sort of red flag that even at 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:43.640 the time people were like, really, you're going to pay 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.840 that much money for a Greek like they're like corny, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.280 like animated. Oh yeah, yeah, they were the because you know, again, 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:52.719 not a lot of people had broadband internet, so you 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:57.240 couldn't send like huge gifts or videos through the email. 0:12:57.600 --> 0:12:59.760 So it was a very weird thing. And then they 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:01.440 they set up there, they so they brought them in, 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:03.199 they set them up on our offices, and then two 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:05.680 years later, when when the company fell apart, they sold 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:07.800 the whole thing for thirty five million dollars, which is 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:12.079 like no, nothing, So you got there. It was right 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:16.079 around the overall market peak. But but after they had peaked, 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:18.080 so you must have been working with a lot of 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:22.160 people who at one point, we're worth millions of dollars 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:25.920 on paper, and day after day watching their paper wealth 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.600 sort of literally vanished. So I'm curious, like, what's that Like. 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:32.000 There were a couple of people there who were actually 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:34.960 had been employees before the I p O. And they 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:37.560 got stock options, which was against a standard thing even 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.280 back then. So yeah, on paper they were millionaires, and 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:42.240 they had sold some of their stock when the stock 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:44.960 was sky high and made a lot of money. But 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:47.240 we're still continuing to work there, and nobody, nobody at 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.360 my level, like was able to, like cash out and retire, 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:50.760 or they might have been able to if they had 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.880 timed it perfectly, but they obviously no one did. And 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.800 you could see the frustration for them, especially as all 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:00.920 their wealth is tied up in this company. And again 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:02.960 they were sold this idea that this is a company 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:04.559 that's gonna last for a long time, this is the 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:08.680 future Internet. And as the company started to slowly fall 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.680 apart and people began to sense that this was not 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.160 going well and it didn't look like it was going 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:16.640 to get better, obviously, Yeah, they were very frustrated and 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:18.880 it was hard to come to work every day knowing that, 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:20.600 Like I said, I was one of the last ones 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.600 in so I sort of knew all along that my 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:25.960 stock options were not going to become anything or was 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.120 it real long shot that my stock options for becomes 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:30.160 a thing. But like you said, yeah, you're right, these people, 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:32.560 on paper, their wealth was they had a lot of 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:34.520 wealth into this company, and then the company was falling 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:40.680 apart around them. So were there any warning signs at 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:42.840 the time, because it's easy for us, of course, to 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:47.440 look back on it seventeen years in the future and 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.040 we can sit here and say, oh, well, obviously they 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.480 paid way too much money for an electronic greeting card company, 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:55.960 and obviously they were paying people too much, and there 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:59.320 was all this success. But at the time, was there 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.800 any indication that the whole thing was going to come collapsing. 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:05.440 I hate to say that, like, there were signs that 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:07.640 was like obvious, this is this is about to burst. 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.440 But when it did start to fall apart, it was 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:13.680 a very slow motion at first and then all at once, 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.440 and there were little signs that things were not going well. 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.040 And the thing for someone at my level, the most 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:22.080 obvious one is those perks like I was talking about 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:23.760 when I was first tired with all the bagels and 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:26.560 the free soda and all that. So after a few months, 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:29.440 suddenly they take away the lunches. There's no free lunches anymore. 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:31.680 And then a couple more weeks go by and now 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:33.480 there's no more bagel, the bagels are only on Friday 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.280 instead of every day of the week, and then yeah, 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:38.800 and then all the the But the big one for me, 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.000 when I was like, Okay, something is definitely going on here. 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.560 Is like shortly before the first round of layoffs, they 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.760 started charging five cents for the sodas in the vending machines, 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:52.600 which used to be free. It's like really literally, nicol, Yeah, 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:54.000 that was the thing. Yeah, it was like you used 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.160 to give us these for nothing, and now you want 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.400 twenty five cents. The fact that was cents almost made 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:01.280 it worse than if they just charged full price, because 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:02.960 it's like, you know, this is all they're gonna get. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:04.800 This is the beginning of the end, and it's going 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:09.080 to start to go down. And in terms of like morale, 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.480 I mean, obviously I imagined the worst thing that happened 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.080 is people losing their millions. But all these little things, 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:17.960 what how does this sort of just general vibe of 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.520 working it does it feel less fun every day? Like? 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.920 So there were little things like that. And then after 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.600 I've been there about a year, so somewhere around the 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.160 beginning of two thousand one, there was our our first 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:34.680 round of layoffs, which was not a huge number in retrospect, 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:37.080 but it was It wasn't like a big wake up 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.920 call to everyone in the company that like, things are 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.360 not going well. Something is wrong and we're not sure 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:43.840 if we're gonna be able to get out of this now. 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:47.600 So they the content people, were the ones who were 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.960 getting acts the most because in addition to the stock dropping, 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:55.120 we began to see the online advertising market started a 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:57.640 crater and that was a huge chunk of our revenue 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.640 at that time. So as that got worse, and then 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:03.920 they laid people off, and then the revenue got worse, 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:05.520 and then they laid more people off. So that whole 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.280 year of two thousand one was like a steady drip 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:10.639 drip drip of There was this first round of layoffs 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:12.000 and then like we all knew that there was going 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:13.560 to be another round, we just didn't know when. We 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:16.080 didn't know where it was going to be. And another 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.600 thing around the same time, for most of two thousand 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.040 they were building a new building for us as it 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.000 can do, headquarters right on the one on one, and 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.840 also one of those classic signs in the headquarter curse. Yeah, 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:29.879 it's like there's a whole name and and it was 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:32.119 open maybe you know. So once that opened, it was 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:33.800 this big, gleaming building. It was very nice. There was 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.239 a cafeteria and so at that time we had we 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:38.560 were taking up space in four buildings. It wasn't even 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.360 still big enough to handle all the employees. But then 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:43.959 suddenly two of the buildings were combined into one building, 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:46.560 and then a few months later we're all combined, and 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:51.360 the company just kept shrinking, both in size and you know, stature, 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:53.960 and every little like I said, every little drip drip 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.400 drip was not only signs that the things were going 0:17:57.400 --> 0:17:59.159 bad for the company, but it was just brutal to 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:01.360 morale and people. You know, that whole year of two 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:04.000 thousand one, the whole summer, everyone just could sort of 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:06.159 see that, like, you know, we need some kind of 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.800 rescue here because this is not going well. And am 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:10.480 I going to be the next person to get laid off? 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:12.320 What am I going to do if I get laid off? 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:14.399 Because the same thing was happening at every other company 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:16.720 in the Bay Area all the same time. So if 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:18.199 you got laid off, there was nowhere else for you 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.679 to go to find another job. Right, So I'm curious, 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:23.679 this is sort of a weird question, but as the 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.720 money dried up and morale took a hit, did you 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:32.800 observe the people around you clinging more firmly to the 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:37.119 idea of the company's mission, Like did people start saying, well, oh, 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:39.080 it's not as fun as it used to be, but 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.679 we're doing something really important here. We're creating the future 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.159 of the Internet. And the reason I ask is because, 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.120 of course, when we talk about bubbles nowadays, a lot 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.560 of people start thinking about bitcoin, and with bitcoin, the 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.160 story is so strong there and there's this whole sort 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.400 of belief system built up around it that people start 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.760 to seize upon whenever the ice goes down. There was 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:04.200 probably some of that at the top of the executives 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:08.040 who were really invested in making this company work, and 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:10.800 you know, at my level, kind of the bottom wrong 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.560 of the company, I think people were just trying to 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.480 trying to stay above water and survive. And we talked 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.879 about this also that part of the thing with bitcoin 0:19:20.040 --> 0:19:23.240 is that people can see a future even if the 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.440 bubble collapses, in the price collapses, people can still see 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.840