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To: BelowTheCrowd who wrote (168818)	7/31/2002 6:21:14 AM
From: Amy J	Respond to of 186894

Hi Michael, RE: "reacting to noise." The noise from (say) 100 privately-held startups in this case most likely indirectly reflects this: finance.yahoo.com "Weighing on the market this morning was a lower than expected July Consumer Confidence report. It fell to 97.1, weaker than the 101.5 consensus. The decline was undoubtedly due to the stock market plunge in July" Could indicate the possibility for a double-dip recession. OTOH: "and may well be partly reversed in August if the recent market improvement is sustained." RE: "A company that doesn't have a strategy going out a year or more is just flailing around." It goes without saying a solid company has to have a solid strategy. But it is equally important to keep a "read" on the market at all times and not be asleep at the wheel. A company that doesn't pay attention (or doesn't have procedures in place to do so), could find itself impacted by a tactical issue (say $2.7B extra inventory) or a strategic issue (invalid market segment), as Cisco unfortunately found itself in. But smart companies can recover from tactical or strategic issues, and Chambers is a smart CEO. RE: "A good strategy, based on good understanding of the customer, the competiton and your competitive advantage is not one that should be changed" Competitors change yearly. Is Rise still around in the s/c business? On the flip side, there's a s/c startup that just raised a boatload of capital, about 10X's the average deal size. Mission statements don't change (or shouldn't) as they are based upon vision, but strategies can change as they reflect market steps towards reaching the vision. RE: "In "normal" times it was understood by most that startups would mostly be selling to smaller businesses and other "trial" clients. Only during the dotcom era did people suddenly expect that large conservative clients would buy stuff from startups. For a startup to sell to a large customer right now would require them to have an amazingly unique and compelling product, not just "better."" Startups sell to large companies all the time, before the boom, during the boom, and after the boom - I'm not sure what your startup experience was like. Going through an indirect channel through a credible or brand-recognized OEM or reseller works for startups. Anyway, none of the above addressed the key point in my previous post. The point of my previous post, was to convey a more important concern, about large company public equities down the road: the potential impact to the future growth rate of large companies as it relates to the possibility of an impact to a portion of the driver of their revenue. Kaufman's point. (Next post.) Regards, Amy J

To: BelowTheCrowd who wrote (168818)	8/3/2002 11:33:50 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 186894

OT Hi Michael, RE: "Second. In "normal" times it was understood by most that startups would mostly be selling to smaller businesses and other "trial" clients. Only during the dotcom era did people suddenly expect that large conservative clients would buy stuff from startups. In the old days you never got fired for buying IBM. Today the list has expanded to include Microsoft, Oracle, Siebel and a few others, but startups are most definitely off the list at most companies. For a startup to sell to a large customer right now would require them to have an amazingly unique and compelling product, not just "better." Most of them don't, and most of them aren't selling. This is a return to reality, and not necessarily an indication that the world is ending." --------------------- A few days ago, but after your post, we got our startup's product into the door of our first non-hightech F500 (and I'll stress it was directly so, though it took months!!!) In addition to themselves, they said they would also like to get their customers using our product - egads. Now the hard work starts - delivering a solution not just a product. Maybe the economy is turning around outside of hightech? Regards, Amy J