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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla Game Investing in the eWorld -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (78)	9/4/1999 9:04:00 AM
From: gdichaz	Respond to of 1817

Malcolm: The joy here is that we are all trying to take a fresh look at the potential "animals" - gorillas, godzillas or no - with a special relationship to B2B e commerce - and beyond. To me, the glue or stickiness is key. Just beginning to think this through it seems to me tentatively that we might discuss why a company may have a potential "lock" or even major compelling advantage vs the competing companies. This may or may not be covered by the term "switching costs". The lock is the essence IMO. Also we know already that we have at least two different "animals" here: 1. The nurturers - SFE, ICGE, CMGI, and SOFTBANK (perhaps). 2. Individual companies directly in the B2B e commerce business. Suggest we try to deal with these differently or we will find ourselves chasing our tails IMO. I am more comfortable personally with discussing the nurturers, since I am so new to all this. So, on the nurturers, I suggest that SFE has a major advantage in the glue department. It provides much more than money and a launching pad. Not only does SFE help in infancy but through adulthood. And perhaps even more important, the companies themselves have a network or interrelationships of mutual help in everything from production, complementarity and marketing. Awesome IMO. So this is not just big daddy with children anxious to fly on their own separately but the equivalent of an extended family. (This has a downside too of course but on balance seems like a major advantage) To me therefore, at least in the case of SFE, the glue is real and substantial - difficult to see and measure - but there. An initial idea on 1. - the nuturers Assume that Teflon can and will deal well with both 1. and 2. over time. As will others who know 2. much better than I do - yet. Comments? Cha2