Robert (Agent '00') Bond, I thoroughly enjoy your humor as regards what is just the beginning of irrational exuberance among Y2K investors and companies. I figure if we're going to be in business together as consultants, we've got to formulate a list of phrases to give to our clients to use in their press-releases:
Ironclad
Contract
Keep Your Fingers Crossed
Pilot Project
Beta-testing
Warm and Fuzzy
Alliance
Psst, wanna buy a Rolex, cheap?
Relationship
Associated
Certified
Hype
Fully-automated
Too late, I fooled ya!
Inadvertent
Unfortunate
Clarification
Correction
Retraction
Here's a sample from FBN's first press-release:
FBN today announced FBN2000, a fully-automated tool for solving the Year 2000 problem. Said CEO TEDennis "We've advised companies with whom we do business, like GM, IBM, Coke and Citibank, that our FBN2000 product can solve their Y2K woes. They are all on record as agreeing they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on code remediation over the next two years. Currently, a total of 35 Fortune 500 companies are evaluating our software. We've also presented a detailed analysis of the Y2K problem to the House of Representatives."
Translation:
"We threw together a few lines of code and nicknamed it FBN2000. We then backed into a shell and are now trading OTC. We drive GM cars, use IBM computers, drink Coke and own a Citbank Visa card, so, naturally, we thought of these companies first when we thought about what names we wanted to put in a press release. Sure they'll all spend big bucks on the Y2K problem, and sure they ain't gonna use us, but we just want to get rich off of our stock holdings not actual conversion projects. We've mailed copies of our software to every Fortune 500 company whose address was handy last week when we became listed. We also wrote a letter to our Congressman."
Sound like a plan?
- Jeff |
