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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sunny who wrote (4686)	8/6/1999 1:05:00 PM
From: Apollo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Sunny: As to which category, I am looking for some guidance My view is that this is a technology economy, quickly migrating to an Internet economy. The rest of the world is years behind, and will need all this technology to stay up with the USA. Therefore, categories of interest to me are those that facilitate the internet, more hardware than service. Networking equipment, telecommunications (like CDMA which is more data capable), storage. But I am working hard to learn about web-hosting services, because of the general E-commerce story in which Forrester Research estimates 1999 commerce will amount to $80 billion in the USA; but by 2003, U.S. commerce will amount to $1.3 trillion. With this kind of growth in business to business e-commerce, web hosting and the like should do well. Probably not gorilla territory, but may be a repeat of Dell, AOL like stories in terms of rapid growth. Examples include Exodus and Digital Island. best wishes, sTan

To: Sunny who wrote (4686)	8/6/1999 11:10:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

Sunny, I guess I understand the application side of the business somewhat better because I can see how it is used. Once the foundation technologies get to the latter stages of the tornado and on main street and become household names, you don't necessarily have to understand them, just recognize that lots of people want or need them. Bingo! You own a rental tool company and I sell carpet. Will either one of us absolutely understand the value of the technologies we invest in? Not in my life time and even if you are yonger than me, not in yours either. I've said in this forum often that my biggest weakness as an investor is that I've not got enough vision. Recognizing that has made me a little bit more of a visionary, but it sure doesn't come naturally or easily. I do a lot of reading of the tech news and after awhile some of it sinks in. One of the things I like about gorilla gaming is that we don't need to know all of the specifics. I don't know if Siebel's front office products are any good. But I can look up all the industries represented among Siebel's customers and realize that, at the least, Siebel's product is well into the bowling alley if not into the tornado. As for estimating market size, I have to take the word of the consulting firms that are in touch with the industries they cover. When I read over and over again that the front office arena will probably be bigger than the ERP space, I ask myself if that makes any sense. When I come to grips with the fact that there isn't a business on the planet without customers, when I think that automation helps those businesses stay in touch with their customers' changing needs, and when I see how much more expensive it is to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, the stuff about the front office space being bigger than the ERP space begins to make sense. After doing that, do I care if the consulting firms' estimates for the market five years from now are off by a few billion dollars? Nah. Not bad for a carpet salesman, huh. :) But some day I'll introduce everyone here in my favorite folder to a barber who puts me to shame with his ability to "see" the future that this stuff is all about. --Mike Buckley