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

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (36093)	12/7/2000 1:38:49 PM
From: Bruce Brown	Respond to of 54805

What space? The business model built on the Internet space. That includes retail, service, maintenance, B2B, B2C, portals, forums like SI, Fool, Raging Bull, etc... and a variety of other models. I've come to the conclusion that the important issue is that the manual is about high-tech companies and only high-tech companies. Boy. You won't get any disagreement from me on that front. AOL, Yahoo!, Amazon and eBay are NOT high-tech companies. They use high-technology to accomplish their mission but they do not sell high-tech products. I'm with you so far. The manual tells us repeatedly that Gorillas come only from the universe of high-tech companies. Yet the cover of the revised manual says in bold red letters, "New! Finding the Internet Gorilla." The fact that the authors crossed the line into the realm of non-high-tech companies certainly speaks volume to me about their credibility insofar as decisions about the manual are concerned. Not only in bold red letters, but a nice little silver circle with jagged edges as well. You must remember that the authors made this statement very early on in that chapter: "It is, of course, way too early to really understand what is going on - that will be known only in hindsight - but we have to come to some provisional platform in the meantime, if only to have an alternative to tea leaves when deciding whether to invest in a given equity." A couple of chapters later, they said this: "Therefore, we believe that the Internet, as individual stocks, is temporarily overvalued and that this will correct in the relatively near future." Correct it did. I don't think the authors were trying to pull the wool over readers eyes at all. Reality is that we have business models making money and surviving quite well in the Godzilla space. Likewise, it is changing and creating a generational gap from client/server application software architecture to network application software architecture. That's a huge, disruptive change and companies like Siebel, i2, Bea Systems, PeopleSoft, Oracle are right in the thick of it with many others. Look. I certainly understand the notion and desire of avoiding the Godzilla companies as investments and as thread discussion. We're not devoting time here to discussing Pfizer, Merck, Harley Davidson, Honda, Washington Mutual, Citigroup, Charles Schwab, E*Trade, Wendy's, McDonald's or whatever - so why should we be discussing a business model built on the Internet using technology from the companies we so admire and invest in using gorilla and royalty game criteria. It's me. My fault and I take full responsibility. I did participate to a great extent on the 'other' thread as well as run some Icarus scoring on companies in that particular space. I only responded to Apollo's post because of my reaction to the BS abbreviation and hopefully have apologized for that. I don't feel I need to be supporting or dishing the authors reasons for incorporating or trying to incorporate the Internet space in their revised edition of "The Gorilla Game". I, personally, found it a compelling 'start' to a process that although early, could be beneficial over the years as we work through the waves of business models that are centered around the use of the Internet at their core. Network applications happens to be the space where I have a lot of money invested via companies that are in transition from client/server to network application. I'm simply trying to grasp the full gamut of what they are all up against as this wonderful thing we call the "Internet" transitions a lot of elements of traditional technology companies (and others) into a new direction. I could accept the authors statements of it's too early to fully understand and grasp what is going on. America Online's upcoming merger with Time Warner is one interesting development that I enjoy watching as the process unfolds to see what it will bring in a few years time. I'm sure there will be others. I'm rambling on and realize that there are other venues where I can discuss these items as well that this thread is not in need of such discussion. BB

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (36093)	12/7/2000 11:07:54 PM
From: Joshua Corbin	Respond to of 54805

AOL, Yahoo!, Amazon and eBay are NOT high-tech companies. If I may toss in a few thoughts. Let us consider Amazon to be a retailer, like Federated Department Stores or L.L. Bean. AOL is a content deliverer, like your local cable company. Yahoo, eBay and the portals are large-scale networks. They aggregate traffic and content that are useful because of their size and popularity. I never liked this idea of "dot-coms" or "e-commerce" or "Godzillas." Companies who use online real-estate are as different as those who rent customer service centers or brick-and-mortar showrooms. Imagine your local strip mall. Let's say that there's a big chain grocery store, a chain pharmacy, a branch bank, a sports bar, a yogurt shop, a hair salon and a dry cleaner. If you were evaluating each of these businesses, would you throw them all together as "brick and mortar?" JMHO, IRTRTBW.