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

To: surpow who wrote (18057)	2/15/2000 9:27:00 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Congratulations on a fine Project Hunt contribution, Noah. I thought I'd say that first, before I asked you any tough questions <gg>. I feel I understand rnwk much better after reading your report. We've discussed them on several occasions over the last year, but like you, were unable to find any protective barriers to entry or high switching costs. However, they have managed to make RealPlayer a defacto standard, and their biggest threat, msft, has failed to come up with a viable product. That leads to my question. If memory serves, msft recently licensed RealPlayer for WebTV. Do you have any idea how long that particular contract will last? Seems to me Mr. Softee capitulated when they signed that agreement. What's your assessment? uf

To: surpow who wrote (18057)	2/15/2000 10:00:00 PM
From: chaz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Noah, you did just fine. In GG terms, you touched on every point we need to know, and did so from a neutral perspective going in. Tell me, how did you like the discovery process itself...instructive, pain in the you-know-what...your reaction, please. I wouldn't be too hopeful on the questions you might get, but please don't let that be a discouragement to your efforts. The whole idea of HUNT was to discover both keepers and discards. Princes will not be much held, and probably little discussed, so you've done us all a huge service. Sincere thanks.

To: surpow who wrote (18057)	2/15/2000 10:26:00 PM
From: Dinesh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Noah Excellent summarization of RNWK. Thank you very much. I do have a question re the switching costs section. And, this may apply to more than one stock. Admittedly, WWW is still very young and a lot more is yet to come. Particularly in the multimedia arena. Yet, as time progresses, wouldn't the content providers get locked into their libraries of RNWK-format content, making it just a wee bit harder to switch. Real Network is very protective of its file formats and has a stable of lawyers just for that. Something along the lines of PostScript, so very queitly. As an aside: Technologically, I think RNWK is falling behind/not able to keep up, unless it is my exposure to MSFT that's blurring my vision and clogging my ears. At high end, supplying tools to universities etc., it has a lot of competition. Also: how do you quantify the recent flap over the covert customer data collection incident, where it came to surface the RNWK was quietly collecting user profiles while playing music, a la Big Brother. Do you think it's a moot point now ? Regards Dinesh

To: surpow who wrote (18057)	2/15/2000 10:54:00 PM
From: Apollo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

RealNetworks Nice job on RealNetworks Noah. Looks like a royalty game; software has low overhead, high margins and profits. But I've used Real Player, and it doesn't look to be that complicated to develop. Seems like RealNetwork's lead on MSFT in this segment is a lot less than what Netscape had over MSFT prior to Explorer getting into high gear; and Netscape's browser must have been more complex than Real Player is now (just my guess). Looks like low BTE, short future. Thanx for encapsulating this for me. Apollo

To: surpow who wrote (18057)	2/16/2000 11:20:00 AM
From: StockHawk	Respond to of 54805

RE: RNWK Project Hunt >>I have used StockHawk's model for Project Hunt for my presentation.<< And you did a beautiful job! >>...I am a new investor. Perhaps all 10Ks are filled with doom and gloom for legal purposes...<< True. Most 10Ks have a rather scarry section of Risks. Although I think it is one of the most valuable pieces of information in the 10Ks it is difficult to distinguish between real threats and those which are mentioned just to cover the company's behind. Statement such as "other companies are larger and have greater resources than us" is pretty standard, however, when they get specific (as you pointed out with the Microsoft threat) that is something to take very seriously, imho. I would suggest that in this Internet Age fewer and fewer investors bother to delve into SEC reports such as 10Ks. Doing so is to our advantage. It is much easier to see, and react to, a market threat if you have been alerted to watch out for it. StockHawk