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Technology Stocks : Ariba Technologies (Nasdaq-ARBA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (1265)	10/3/2000 10:05:27 PM
From: Greg S.	Respond to of 2110

imagine 600 thousand new tech workers. That -might- almost fill the worker deficit here in Silicon Valley. ;) imagine a low barrier to entry system where everybody can produce a marketplace system in a secure environment. imagine every mom and pop having access to this technology. Why would the average mom and pop want to produce a marketplace system? USE one, yes .. but produce one? Anyway, one thing you can count on is change. The B2B market is going to be an interesting one because it is going to explode, and yet there will be so much pressure for consolidation and open standards that where the money is may actually not be in building marketplaces, but some other tangent service down the road. Take for example the web browser. There is NO market for web browsers now. Everyone has a free one. But many years ago AOL had encapsulated internet access into a pretty, easy-to-use interface and they made tons of money. The reason they continue to grow is because they have expanded out of that market, leveraging their existing (and growing) web portal subscriber base to offer other services - it's not just a software app that shows you the web. Maybe it's important for us investors to start looking back at some fundamentals -- like the business plan. Not "what market are you in now?" because in this hyper-competitive economy markets appear and disappear almost like magic. But "what markets is this company going to expand into down the road?" If you have confidence that a few years down the road, the management will have the agility to expand into new markets, and the power to leverage its customers to offer new products and services in those markets, then the company is a good buy at any price. Why? Because their business will continue to grow regardless of whether or not marketplace software becomes a commodity. Until it does become a commodity, they will make plenty of money on it. By the time margins flatten, they should be making money elsewhere, even if it's adding value to their existing services. -G