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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (130260)	8/17/2001 11:39:52 PM
From: Victor Lazlo	Respond to of 164684

<< but it is nice to monitor blood sugar in the normal range. >> that's for sure

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (130260)	8/20/2001 11:27:18 AM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

SB, a neat story of 2 local San Diego .coms who are doing well. >Yet some dot-coms survived. After nearly three years in cyberspace, Z57.com now has nearly 6,000 customers. The company had $2.7 million in revenue last year, and Weber expects to see revenue of between $4 million and $5 million this year. Internet as a product Weber wasn't trying to sell products on the Internet, or change consumer culture. Instead, he was selling the Internet as a product. Z57.com offered old economy businesses the chance to move online by providing them with their own Web pages. For his customers, the investment was not too steep. His prices started at around $500 to create a Web site and $30 a month to maintain it. Another San Diego Internet company, PeopleFirst.com, also expects this year to be its best ever. Launched in 1997, the company offers online loans to car and motorcycle buyers. The company handled nearly $400 million in transactions last quarter. PeopleFirst.com founders Gary Miller and Dave Zeller built their company around the already established industry of loaning money to car buyers. Miller and Zeller said they first came up with the idea for PeopleFirst.com while working for Ford Motor Credit years ago. After persuading their friends and relatives to give them $1 million in 1995 to get started, they hired a computer programmer and spent the next 18 months building the technology to process loans online. They didn't launch the company until 1997, and they approved $1 million worth of loans to 65 customers that year. The company lends money to auto buyers, and borrows money to finance those loans from banks at a lower rate. PeopleFirst.com took a conservative and realistic approach to gaining market share. Unlike dot-coms that bought everything from banner advertisements to Super Bowl spots, PeopleFirst.com didn't burn through its funding by promoting itself. Partnerships helpful Instead, PeopleFirst.com went after customers by partnering with well-known companies like Kelley Blue Book, Mail Boxes Etc. and credit card giant MBNA. "We view this market as awareness and adoption," Miller said. Partnerships were perhaps the fastest way to those goals. Weber and his business partner, David Baird, started Z57.com on a risky concept. The company's small sales team aggressively sold Web sites, literally banging on doors and cold-calling up to 200 companies a day, but they weren't exactly sure how to create them. Once someone placed an order, Weber scrambled to find a free-lance Web designer to do the job. As a result, all work done by the company was already paid for. "Most companies, they go out and build the technology and say, 'How are we going to sell this?'" Weber said. "We sell the technology and say, 'How are we going to build this?'" Z57.com needed some Web sites early on to show customers what they could do, so Weber cut three key deals near the outset. The company designed the Web site for the San Diego State University School of Engineering for $6,000 -- $10,000 less than anyone else offered. Weber traded a La Costa golf Web site for rounds of golf, and he did the Old Town Web site for free. "When you get La Costa, Old Town and San Diego State in your portfolio, all of a sudden you have some clout within the community," he said. As business picked up and money became available, Weber hired his own Web designers and slowly increased the staff. Z57.com now has 80 employees in two offices in San Diego and Carlsbad. Downturn hasn't hurt The dot-com downturn had little effect on the company, Weber said. He targeted small and medium-sized businesses, building Web sites for insurance agents, real estate agents and the like. Those businesses were not directly affected by the lapsing tech economy, and the monthly revenue from them remained strong. There are more than 20 million businesses in the United States, and at least half of them don't have Web sites yet, Weber said. He is hoping to expand his company into different locations throughout Southern California. PeopleFirst.com also has found an enormous market. The San Diego company's Web site gets nearly 3,000 applications a day, and approves or rejects most of them in less than 15 minutes. The approved customers are then mailed a blank check -- with a maximum limit -- to give to a car dealer. "We've turned a painful process into a pleasant experience for people," Miller said. The company's total loan volume soared to $50 million in 1998 and is projected at $2 billion this year. Investors also flocked to the company. PeopleFirst.com received an astonishing $36.5 million in funding last year -- and that's on top of $22 million in 1999 and $2 million the year before. Miller is looking for even more funding, and knows that the capital markets are tough these days. But he said that, even in these turbulent times, he expects the company to make a profit by the end of the year. He said PeopleFirst.com succeeded because it has a business model that "actually makes sense." "Only the good companies are going to survive," he said, "and the ones that do survive will be stronger."