With data zooming through the Internet like never before, Infographics have exploded as a way to efficiently and stylishly report information on a myriad of subjects. In response, start-up Visual.ly has taken the reigns on curating and creating infographics on everything from the collapse of banks to beards. READ MORE
Google is making a splash with the Android OS that’s starting to turn into a tidal wave. It seems almost every week there is some new high-powered smartphone that runs on Android, such as the recently announced Motorola Droid 2. As covered recently in Inc. magazine, Android is also showing up on tablets that are hoping to dethrone the popular Apple — perhaps by gang warfare. This domination has made the pundits wonder: what comes next? Could Android show up on notebook and desktop computers, your next HD television, on the LCD screen in your car, and even as the operating system for your next oven? According to Ross Rubin, a smartphone analyst with NPD Group, Google has already shown Android running on a watch and other personal, low-power devices. It’s not unthinkable to imagine Android taking on the big boys like Microsoft and Apple. “Android’s success will depend on a number of factors, including how well the dynamics of the category lend themselves to Android’s strength, Android’s support for a full Google experience on those devices, and the market acceptance of key applications that may be native to competitors,” says Rubin. That means: Android has a good chance if the market plays along. Still, the jury is still out on whether the OS can compete as a tablet operating system, and Rubin says Google has a tough road ahead, mainly because there is no app store yet for these brand new tablets. Yet, Rubin also says Android has strong prospects because the tablet market has many of the same “fluid dynamics” as smartphones, such as high product churn (consumers wanting a new device every few months) and early adoption. Why Android, why now? Dan Noal, a solutions architect at Wind River, a software company owned by Intel that works on embedded systems such as medical devices, cameras, and set-top boxes, says Google has nurtured Android over the years, built up strong developer relations, and (unlike Apple) given developers a degree of freedom to develop innovative applications with custom interfaces. Noal says Android also hit a perfect storm with phones: right around the time it came out, one of the leading mobile platforms essentially died (Windows Mobile) and another went comatose (Nokia Symbian). That has led to new product categories, starting with tablets but also with recent set-top boxes such as the Logitech Revue (which runs on Android). Samsung recently touched on plans to experiment with Android as an OS for a future HDTV, according to a CrunchGear.com report. Of course, Google also announced that Chrome OS will available for netbooks and notebooks soon, and the company hinted back in July of 2009 than Chrome and Android will likely merge. (The two operating systems probably share a common Linux code base.) Some netbooks, such as the Acer Aspire D250, came with an option to run Android or Windows when you first boot the machine. Is it flexible enough? In my tests, Android running on a netbook or tablet is a bit clunky — the OS is designed for a smaller screen, and apps tend to look pixelated or don’t format correctly for the larger 7-inch screen.There’s some question about whether Google can really make Android work for a variety of devices. That said, Android has one major advantage over other operating systems, including those from Microsoft: the licensing costs are much lower, according to Noal. However, Android likely will not show up on dishwashers, ovens, and other appliances since those product categories can usually get by with a leaner and less powerful OS, usually based on Linux and without any licensing fees. Still, there is one last proving ground for Android: your automobile. Rubin disagreed with the idea, saying most car makers have established relationships with companies like QNX. However, the ease of connection between a car navigation screen and your phone makes sense. “There is no doubt that Android will find its ways into cars. While there are special considerations unique to the auto industry, those in the industry have already had discussions and started looking into Android for aftermarket auto electronics, such as car navigation systems,” says Noal. In the end, Android may not reach total world domination. It has a long road ahead in the laptop space, will compete with iPhone, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry in the smartphone category, and probably won’t work for appliances and small electronics like clock radios. But it will continue to gain market share, says Rubin, and could even enter that rare legion of top market share.
What’s Next Actor Jack Palance, in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Curly the trail boss in City Slickers, said the secret to happiness was “one thing,” with the challenge being to find out what that thing is for you. Well, the same appears to be true for finding business success on today’s Internet, where the best companies choose a specialty and stick to it. Amazon.com sticks to selling, eBay sticks to auctions, and Google limits itself to searching, which might be the most important Internet business of all. This is a good time to reconsider the whole idea of Internet business. Investors’ rolling eyes and dreary business-school case studies notwithstanding, the Internet remains the most successful failure in the history of enterprise. For while the bubble may have burst and a trillion dollars or more of shareholder equity may have evaporated, the truth is that more people than ever are using the Net. Growth in both the number of users and the Internet bandwidth they require has never faltered. Half the Internet companies have disappeared, but more of us are online than ever, and that means business opportunity. The trick is to do it differently this time around, and Google is a prime example of how to do it right. We’ve been here before. A decade ago I met six boys who were running a company in the archetypal Silicon Valley garage. Their start-up was capitalized at $15,000 borrowed from parents. The day I came on the scene the company still had more than $12,000 of that in the bank. Their invention was one of the first search engines, a tool for finding information in huge volumes of text data. Over the course of a few months I helped the tiny company find its first customer, its first outside investor, and its first venture capitalist. Somehow I forgot to grab any stock for myself, which made me look stupid six years later when, at the height of Internet mania, the company — by then called Excite — was sold for $6.7 billion. Excite today is at best another portal, but there is much to be learned from its humbling and from comparing it to Google, which is very much Excite for a new millennium. One reason Excite and so many other Internet businesses from the 1990s stumbled was that they saw their original business idea not as an end but as a means. Excite had the best searching technology of its day, but the company saw searching as a steppingstone on the way to becoming the Internet equivalent of a television network. Searching would attract users, but what would keep them was to turn the search engine into a portal on the Web. At least that was the idea. So Excite, Yahoo, and others added staff and increased expenditures, driven by the idea that searching alone wouldn’t be enough to sustain a significant Internet enterprise. They were wrong. All Google does is searching. As I am writing these words, Google’s index comprises 3,083,324,652 webpages, or about one page for every two people on earth — everyone from rain forest tribesmen to members of the Russian mafia. This is a number too large to comprehend, but it helps us put the challenge of searching the Internet in some context. Looking for a particular webpage is like looking for two specific people on earth without knowing either their names or where they live. Every Internet product or service is utterly dependent on searching. Nearly all search engines use programs called “spiders,” which roam the Internet finding new webpages and “dragging” them back for analysis. How that analysis takes place can vary a lot from engine to engine. All search engines look at the words on the page and some stop there, ranking the results solely by the frequency of keywords on the site. By this way of thinking, a website that says “Inc. magazine” 20 times is more likely to be useful than one that says those same words only once. But all is not as it seems, since clever website operators can fool these simple search engines by inserting keywords — “Inc. magazine” 20, 50, or 100 times over — written in a tiny font and hidden behind the pictures on a webpage. We can’t read these tags because they are hidden, but the spider programs can read them and be fooled. Google’s approach to searching is different. The spider program is still there and it still reads both the real and hidden text on a page. But when it comes to ordering the 4.23 million pages that contain both the words “Inc.” and “magazine,” and presenting them to users in order of relevance, Google is smarter. Google orders the results not purely by how often keywords appear, but also by how many other webpages are linked to the webpages containing the keywords. In essence the system gauges a given webpage by how relevant the designers of millions of other pages have found it to be. This technique, which was invented by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were graduate students at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, is unique to Google and patented. Finding useful search results is one thing, and making that a good business is another. Google also had to make its results load faster to further attract users, it had to keep transaction costs down in search of profitability, and it had to find a way to gain revenue from searching. Keeping costs down was simple: Where Excite ran on banks of Unix servers from Sun Microsystems linked to massive disk arrays from EMC, Google runs on personal computers using the Linux operating system, which is free. Admittedly, we are talking about the world’s largest Linux cluster, with more than 10,000 computers, but they are generic “white box” computers just like what you might have at home. To make the pages load faster, Google did not sell banner ads on its site, so only the search result itself had to be transmitted across the data line. Banner ads had been the sole source of revenue for the first-generation search engines, but by the time Google came along in 1998, banner ads were going down in both price and popularity. There had to be a better way to make money. Rolling eyes notwithstanding, the Internet remains the most successful failure in the history of enterprise.
Inc. magazine profiled the start-up CDnow in its Anatomy of a Start-Up series in June 1996. In January 2001 Inc. checked back in to find the once-hot Internet music retailer suffering from big losses and plunging stock values. Company: CDnow Founders: Jason and Matthew Olim Vital signs then: Twin twentysomething brothers launched what was — back when they started it, in 1994 — an anomaly: a virtual store, on the Internet. From their parents’ house near Philadelphia, the Olim brothers spent about $80,000 (chump change by today’s dot-com standards) to create the online storefront, which they then grew from their own rocket-fueled revenues. The company pulled in $2 million in sales in 1995 and expected to hit $12 million in 1996. What the experts said: One praised CDnow for its ability to keep costs down, reach a global audience, and deliver a product to consumers quickly. Michael Sullivan-Trainor, then the director of Internet commerce at International Data Corp., said, “CDnow’s experience to date suggests that it can go the distance.” The big looming question was competition, for if CDnow could come out of nowhere and make millions, why couldn’t someone else? Competitors and music industry experts suggested that CDnow should leverage its existing popularity and diversify its product offering. Vital signs now: The company’s sales grew — to $147 million in 1999 — but so did its losses. (It posted losses of $119 million in 1999.) CDnow both benefited from and fell victim to the investment community’s hot-then-cold treatment of Internet stocks: it went public in 1998 at $16 a share; its stock shot up and then took a nosedive. Last July CDnow was trading at about $3 a share, and German media giant Bertelsmann AG agreed to acquire the company for $117 million in cash. (Full disclosure: Gruner + Jahr, a Bertelsmann company, acquired Inc. in August 2000.) What the experts say today: “The outgo was bigger than the income, which is never good,” says Robert Labatt, a research director for Gartner, a research and consulting company in San Jose. “They built a brand in North America and a smaller brand in Japan, but they were unable to make that brand work efficiently enough to be profitable.” Labatt has high hopes for CDnow’s future under Bertelsmann’s worldwide and capital-rich umbrella. And as for the much-touted database of paying Internet shoppers that CDnow’s proponents singled out as a strong point: Labatt thinks that although the data alone are useful, “the sale and reuse of that data is becoming more of a thorny issue, just as it has become more tactical.” As reported by Anne Marie Borrego. Copyright © 2001 G+J USA Publishing
Four years after profiling Streamline.com in its Anatomy of a Start-Up series in November 1996, Inc. magazine checked back in to find the company defunct due to its poorly conceived e-commerce model. Here’s a brief overview of what went wrong. Company: Streamline.com Formerly: Streamline Inc. Founder: Tim DeMello Vital signs then: DeMello started a Massachusetts-based service that provided home delivery of groceries and picked up and dropped off movie rentals, dry cleaning, and film. Each customer paid $30 a month for Streamline to deliver groceries weekly and stock them in a box (consisting of a freezer, a refrigerator, and a few open shelves) located in the customer’s basement or garage. In contrast to services like Peapod Inc. that set up partnerships with local grocery stores, Streamline operated its own warehouse. DeMello, with $5 million in the bank, projected revenues of $1.1 million for 1996 and nearly $50 million for 1998. What the experts said: Although one was enthusiastic about the potential for market acceptance, he warned that some customers might find the once-a-week delivery too infrequent. Another expert suggested that at-home grocery shoppers usually liked to be around when the bags arrived, so they could inspect the contents. Finally, noted a third observer, if DeMello couldn’t convince a large number of shoppers in enough cities they needed his services, profits would be pint-sized. Vital signs now: After the original Anatomy article appeared, Web shopping exploded, and Streamline decided to capitalize on the trend by adding the dot-com suffix before it went public, in June 1999. Pricing the offering at $10 a share, Streamline raised $45 million. But for the six months ending July 1, 2000, it lost $23 million, and its stock price dropped to less than $3. In September, Peapod, a Streamline competitor, acquired the ailing company’s Washington, D.C., and Chicago assets for about $12 million in cash. It also agreed to assume Streamline’s lease obligations in those locations. In November, Streamline announced it was discontinuing its service. What the experts say today: “The online grocery model is very expensive to start up and maintain,” says Ken Cassar, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research in New York City. Cassar notes that distributing perishables and nonperishables costs non-brick-and-mortar grocers a pretty penny. “And add to that Streamline’s refrigerator-in-a-garage model, and it becomes a more daunting model,” he says. Then there’s the tomato problem. “People tend to be rather particular about their tomatoes and other produce items. It takes a big leap of faith to allow someone else to pick your tomatoes,” Cassar says. As reported by Anne Marie Borrego. Copyright © 2001 G+J USA Publishing
The February 2001 issue of Inc. highlights some of the results of the E-culture survey conducted by Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s team at the Harvard Business School. The survey looked at the way the Internet is affecting businesses large and small. For a quantitative understanding of where small businesses stand in their Web efforts, consult the statistics and conclusions in the story in Inc. magazine, “You Are Here.” But statistics can’t capture passion or frustration or hope. What follows is a selection of comments from small- and emerging-company executives who, as part of the E-culture survey, answered open-ended questions about their Internet experiences. Listen carefully — some of their voices may sound a lot like your own. The passion:“Internet use has improved relationships with our clients. They say things via e-mail and in working together on documents on the Internet that they never would have said to us in a more formal setting. We become friends over the Internet. We learn about them having to leave the office for a son’s soccer game, or a home remodeling project. We are more a part of their lives in our e-mail exchanges. Some people say that e-mail is reducing communication between people, but we find just the opposite is true.” “The Internet is where everything will be moving.” “I believe that the Internet is the greatest equalizer of our age. Never has there been greater opportunity for so many for so little.” “I believe the true value of the Net will exceed even the radical predictions now taking hold in the media.” “We are counting on the fact that the Internet is changing business. We do expect to change the world.” “I believe that the Internet is the most positive thing that has ever happened in the technology field. This new technology will completely change the way we do business.” The frustration:“My company is a dinosaur in a world that requires and rewards nimble, quick-flying birds.” “[ The Web is] way overrated, a mantra similar to a religion.” “I’m sick of the hype and business models — like online grocers — which are so obviously flawed.” “The Internet has the power to change a whole lot of things a little, but only a few things a whole lot.” “What we’re seeing is a general reluctance to take the leap of faith necessary to move more products and services onto the Web.” “Our first Web site was directed at traditional retail customers, but we found that it alienated our wholesale customers, who saw it as infringing on their turf. And it wasn’t the right medium for our product [ handmade tables and other home accessories] as our product is very tactile and variable.” “The company is still crawling out of mainframe hell and thinks e-mail is bleeding edge. It will be a long time before they overcome their fear of technology.” “I would love to be more Web focused, but where do I go? Whom do I trust?” “Our organization is fragmented in terms of strategy and structure, and that has impacted our organization’s experience with the Web. We are also a complicated structure and may be at a disadvantage versus competitors.” “Although I work for a technology company, we have not utilized technology even a fraction of its value. It’s similar to being married to a doctor who is never around to treat the family illnesses.” The hope:“The Internet breaks down the regionality of global creative content, allowing us to compete on a par with all others. Our way of bringing together multicultural creativity at a lower cost than the West will allow us to make full use of the sleepless Internet market.” “Eventually our industry [ construction] is going to see the light. It is those companies that work with the technology now that will be ahead in the future.” “The Internet has been a blast! We are very excited about its potential for growing our business and changing the way people purchase our product, which has been very locally based.” “In the past few years a lot of our international clients have sourced us over the Internet. Our future financial success will be because of the Internet.” “We believe that the present local market is limiting. The Internet will be a viable answer to the questions of how to increase market and sales.” “I would like to change every aspect of my business by leveraging the Web. Products change quickly, and organizations need to change just as fast. The Internet is flexible enough to allow change to happen quickly and efficiently.” Copyrigh © 2001 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow by Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the book that grew out of the E-culture survey. Related resources:You Are HereE-Culture Survey Methodology Are You Ready to Lead the E-Cultural Revolution?
This is the year the Internet hit the Inc. 500, Inc. magazine’s annual list of the fastest-growing privately held U.S. companies, big time. One indicator? Of the 500 companies on this year’s Inc. 500, 64, or 12.8%, used the word Internet, E-commerce, Web, E-business, E-something, .com,.net or on-line either in their name or in the brief description Inc. magazine publishes of what their companies do. That’s more than a twofold increase from 1999. Still, those 64 companies, listed below, represent only a fraction of the Internet-related companies on the 2000 Inc. 500. That’s because, in compiling this mini-list, we looked only at business names as published in the magazine, and at the brief business descriptions published in the magazine — which are often shortened because of space constraints.Still, despite its obvious limitations, the mini-list below will give you a taste of the role that the Internet plays in this year’s Inc. 500 class. To find out more about these companies — and the rest of the Inc. 500 — consult a copy of the Inc. 500 issue of Inc. magazine. It hits newsstands starting October 17, but subscribers receive the magazine earlier. You will also find the information here at www.inc.com/500 in November. Name and Description Published in Inc. Rank on the 2000 Inc. 500 ePartners provides E-business services #3 Support Technologies offers help-desk services, including E-support, outsourcing, & certification #14 Meritage Technologies provides E-business consulting & professional services #15 Rapid Link Communications provides Internet-based international communication services #35 Thaumaturgix provides Internet consulting services #41 PlanetGov.com operates E-commerce portal for government employees #45 Logical Net provides telecommunications & Internet services #47 Net.world provides Internet-protocol networks and software #62 CUShopper operates an on-line shopping network for credit-union members #66 CP Internet sells Internet access, network services, and data & voice lines #100 Xor provides Internet-technology, network, & systems consulting services #109 Integro provides E-business consulting services #112 Deerfield.com markets & distributes connectivity-leveraging software #116 TEOCO provides Web-based consulting & software and incubates IT companies #119 Beaverhome.com manufactures home furnishings for sale on the Internet #125 SmartDM provides on-line and off-line direct marketing services #127 Certified Associates provides E-business & IT services #134 SupplyCore.com provides Internet-based purchasing & logistics services #137 TeamTech International provides on-line portal services for conferences & other IT services #144 Infinity Software Development develops custom Internet, mainframe, client-server, & multimedia software #146 On-line Investment Services provides electronic securities-trading services #152 Capella Education provides on-line classes & long-distance education #158 Line 6 Thousand develops Internet-enabled digital audio products for music creation #168 James River Technical offers E-business and Unix consulting & services #172 TechBooks facilitates translation of written content into Internet format #173 CodeSoft International provides E-commerce consulting services #177 Paramount Technologies provides Internet-based procurement & workforce-automation software #187 IQ Group provides E-business and Internet consulting services #191 Allied Group provides Internet professional services #193 eCybersuite provides E-business & IT services #197 ManagedOps.com sells software and provides information-systems consulting services. #206 National Healthcare Resources provides on-line and off-line services for resolving insurance claims #216 Shore.net offers Internet access & hosting services #220 TRX provides fulfillment & technology services for the on-line travel industry #224 InfoSphere designs, builds, & supports infrastructure for E-business sites #231 RMX delivers mail & parcels and provides E-commerce services #233 Go-e-biz.com offers E-business workshops and consulting services #243 LocalNet provides regional Internet services #246 PB Systems provides integration, design, & E-business services #270 Inforonics provides E-business outsourcing services #285 IntelliNet provides consulting & E-strategy services #292 REI Systems provides E-business services #295 SimStar provides E-business services to pharmaceutical companies #326 Cue Data Services provides IT & E-commerce consulting services #327 Bizstrata provides products and on-line services to the direct-selling industry #329 Crimson Consulting Group provides marketing consulting services for E-commerce and Internet companies #331 Datazed Software Services provides IT consulting & Internet-access services #341 Revelwood provides software & services for Web-based enterprise planning & reporting #344 Authoria develops E-workforce communication software #347 Atlantic.Net offers Internet-access & Web hosting services #350 Accuship.com provides on-line shipping services #353 Catapult Systems provides E-business consulting services & products #370 Mainline Information Systems sells IBM computer systems & provides E-commerce consulting services #375 G.A. Sullivan provides Internet-software-development services #400 OnSphere provides E-business consulting services #401 Traffic Builders provides turnkey interactive trade-show and Internet promotions #403 CyberRep.com provides live customer-interaction services over the Web #408 UltraBac.com designs & sells backup & disaster-recovery software #417 Examen provides Internet-based tools for managing legal costs #419 Network One provides long-distance, Internet-access and other telephone services #422 Newton Resource Group provides Web-based IT services #448 Rapidigm provides Web-development, enterprise-resource-planning, & IT consulting services #452 Glyphix Studio provides brand-development, Web-design, and strategic-marketing services #497 eLabor.com provides labor-resource-planning software #500 Copyright © 2000 G+J USA Publishing
This is the year the Internet hit the Inc. 500, Inc. magazine’s annual list of the fastest-growing privately held U.S. companies, big time. One indicator? Of the 500 companies on this year’s Inc. 500, 64, or 12.8%, used the word Internet, E-commerce, Web, E-business, E-something, .com,.net or on-line either in their name or in the brief description Inc. magazine publishes of what their companies do. That’s more than a twofold increase from 1999. Still, those 64 companies, listed below, represent only a fraction of the Internet-related companies on the 2000 Inc. 500. That’s because, in compiling this mini-list, we looked only at business names as published in the magazine, and at the brief business descriptions published in the magazine — which are often shortened because of space constraints.Still, despite its obvious limitations, the mini-list below will give you a taste of the role that the Internet plays in this year’s Inc. 500 class. To find out more about these companies — and the rest of the Inc. 500 — consult a copy of the Inc. 500 issue of Inc. magazine. It hits newsstands starting October 17, but subscribers receive the magazine earlier. You will also find the information here at www.inc.com/500 in November. Name and Description Published in Inc. Rank on the 2000 Inc. 500 ePartners provides E-business services #3 Support Technologies offers help-desk services, including E-support, outsourcing, & certification #14 Meritage Technologies provides E-business consulting & professional services #15 Rapid Link Communications provides Internet-based international communication services #35 Thaumaturgix provides Internet consulting services #41 PlanetGov.com operates E-commerce portal for government employees #45 Logical Net provides telecommunications & Internet services #47 Net.world provides Internet-protocol networks and software #62 CUShopper operates an on-line shopping network for credit-union members #66 CP Internet sells Internet access, network services, and data & voice lines #100 Xor provides Internet-technology, network, & systems consulting services #109 Integro provides E-business consulting services #112 Deerfield.com markets & distributes connectivity-leveraging software #116 TEOCO provides Web-based consulting & software and incubates IT companies #119 Beaverhome.com manufactures home furnishings for sale on the Internet #125 SmartDM provides on-line and off-line direct marketing services #127 Certified Associates provides E-business & IT services #134 SupplyCore.com provides Internet-based purchasing & logistics services #137 TeamTech International provides on-line portal services for conferences & other IT services #144 Infinity Software Development develops custom Internet, mainframe, client-server, & multimedia software #146 On-line Investment Services provides electronic securities-trading services #152 Capella Education provides on-line classes & long-distance education #158 Line 6 Thousand develops Internet-enabled digital audio products for music creation #168 James River Technical offers E-business and Unix consulting & services #172 TechBooks facilitates translation of written content into Internet format #173 CodeSoft International provides E-commerce consulting services #177 Paramount Technologies provides Internet-based procurement & workforce-automation software #187 IQ Group provides E-business and Internet consulting services #191 Allied Group provides Internet professional services #193 eCybersuite provides E-business & IT services #197 ManagedOps.com sells software and provides information-systems consulting services. #206 National Healthcare Resources provides on-line and off-line services for resolving insurance claims #216 Shore.net offers Internet access & hosting services #220 TRX provides fulfillment & technology services for the on-line travel industry #224 InfoSphere designs, builds, & supports infrastructure for E-business sites #231 RMX delivers mail & parcels and provides E-commerce services #233 Go-e-biz.com offers E-business workshops and consulting services #243 LocalNet provides regional Internet services #246 PB Systems provides integration, design, & E-business services #270 Inforonics provides E-business outsourcing services #285 IntelliNet provides consulting & E-strategy services #292 REI Systems provides E-business services #295 SimStar provides E-business services to pharmaceutical companies #326 Cue Data Services provides IT & E-commerce consulting services #327 Bizstrata provides products and on-line services to the direct-selling industry #329 Crimson Consulting Group provides marketing consulting services for E-commerce and Internet companies #331 Datazed Software Services provides IT consulting & Internet-access services #341 Revelwood provides software & services for Web-based enterprise planning & reporting #344 Authoria develops E-workforce communication software #347 Atlantic.Net offers Internet-access & Web hosting services #350 Accuship.com provides on-line shipping services #353 Catapult Systems provides E-business consulting services & products #370 Mainline Information Systems sells IBM computer systems & provides E-commerce consulting services #375 G.A. Sullivan provides Internet-software-development services #400 OnSphere provides E-business consulting services #401 Traffic Builders provides turnkey interactive trade-show and Internet promotions #403 CyberRep.com provides live customer-interaction services over the Web #408 UltraBac.com designs & sells backup & disaster-recovery software #417 Examen provides Internet-based tools for managing legal costs #419 Network One provides long-distance, Internet-access and other telephone services #422 Newton Resource Group provides Web-based IT services #448 Rapidigm provides Web-development, enterprise-resource-planning, & IT consulting services #452 Glyphix Studio provides brand-development, Web-design, and strategic-marketing services #497 eLabor.com provides labor-resource-planning software #500 Copyright © 2000 G+J USA Publishing
Donna Iucolano, vice-chairperson of Shop.org, an Internet retailing trade organization, and former chairperson of its research committee, spoke with Inc. magazine about the recent expansion in same-day Web delivery services. Inc.: Are there a lot of same-day delivery start-ups out there? Iucolano: There is a great deal of focus on delivery and fulfillment, and I would say that has come about as a result of activity in the last 18 months. Most Internet retail was very much focused on the front-end activities — the look and feel of the Web site, taking and processing an order — and in reality that was 50% of the battle with respect to what the customer wanted. The stumbling block was on the back end, with respect to being able to actually deliver the finished product to a consumer. Inc.: Then is the potential market the whole of Internet retail? Iucolano: I don’t think it’s that big. It’s sort of like the FedEx model of a few years back. You used to put a package in the mail, and it got there when it got there. Then FedEx in its brilliance convinced us that we had to have it overnight. So it created a market. It’s really interesting how a lot of these products and services create their market just because they exist. Inc.: How’s that? Iucolano: Given the choice of having a book in two days or having it in an hour — well, you probably never thought of having it in an hour, and all of a sudden it’s available to you. Right now the market for same-day delivery is probably relatively small, but it’s one of the fastest-growing areas of opportunity. Internet companies are all taking and processing orders, but they’re all spending a ton of money to do that. It’s too early to tell who the winners might be. Inc.: What do these companies need to succeed? Iucolano: Customer demand. The customers have to be convinced that they really need things the same day, outside of the floral business and the gift business. Video and food make a lot of sense. Anything else that’s going to work will be products that consumers latch onto and say, “I need that right now!” whether they really do or not. Copyright © 2000 G+J USA Publishing
Donna Iucolano, vice-chairperson of Shop.org, an Internet retailing trade organization, and former chairperson of its research committee, spoke with Inc. magazine about the recent expansion in same-day Web delivery services. Inc.: Are there a lot of same-day delivery start-ups out there? Iucolano: There is a great deal of focus on delivery and fulfillment, and I would say that has come about as a result of activity in the last 18 months. Most Internet retail was very much focused on the front-end activities — the look and feel of the Web site, taking and processing an order — and in reality that was 50% of the battle with respect to what the customer wanted. The stumbling block was on the back end, with respect to being able to actually deliver the finished product to a consumer. Inc.: Then is the potential market the whole of Internet retail? Iucolano: I don’t think it’s that big. It’s sort of like the FedEx model of a few years back. You used to put a package in the mail, and it got there when it got there. Then FedEx in its brilliance convinced us that we had to have it overnight. So it created a market. It’s really interesting how a lot of these products and services create their market just because they exist. Inc.: How’s that? Iucolano: Given the choice of having a book in two days or having it in an hour — well, you probably never thought of having it in an hour, and all of a sudden it’s available to you. Right now the market for same-day delivery is probably relatively small, but it’s one of the fastest-growing areas of opportunity. Internet companies are all taking and processing orders, but they’re all spending a ton of money to do that. It’s too early to tell who the winners might be. Inc.: What do these companies need to succeed? Iucolano: Customer demand. The customers have to be convinced that they really need things the same day, outside of the floral business and the gift business. Video and food make a lot of sense. Anything else that’s going to work will be products that consumers latch onto and say, “I need that right now!” whether they really do or not. Copyright © 2000 G+J USA Publishing
