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Heart Of An Economic Transformation
Netpreneurs Pioneer Tomorrow's Digital Business
Statements
made at Netpreneur events and recorded here reflect solely the views
of the speakers and have not been reviewed or researched for
accuracy or truthfulness. These statements in no way reflect the
opinions or beliefs of the Morino Institute, Netpreneur.org or any
of their affiliates, agents, officers or directors. The transcript
is provided "as is" and your use is at your own risk.
Copyright
1998 Morino Institute. All rights reserved. Edited for length and
clarity.
an RTF version of the complete transcript is available
(50K)
"A sweeping economic transformation is underway,"
says Mario Morino, Chairman of the Morino Institute, "one of enormous opportunities
and risks." Here are his comments on what makes "netpreneurs" different
from traditional entrepreneurs, why they are showing us how business will be done in the
new century, and why the Baltimore/Washington region is leading the way to this new
digital economy. They come from a Netpreneur Program's Coffee and
DoughNets meeting held June 11, 1998.
Introduction: Angels In The Outfield
Let me first thank both Johns Hopkins University and
the Abell Foundation. We couldn't ask for better partners for our first event in
Baltimore.
I'd also like to introduce and thank someone here tonight who is a real mentor in the
entrepreneur world, Dr. Bill Wetzel. Dr. Wetzel is the director emeritus for the Center
for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire and part of the national faculty
for the course, Seed Investing as a Team Sport, a working session of private, seed
investors sponsored by the National Association of State
Venture Funds. He has been called the "father of angel investor research"
for his work in the assessment of angel investing.
Investorwords calls an angel, "A
wealthy individual who provides start-up capital to very young companies to help them
grow, taking a large risk in exchange for a potentially large return on investment."
We tend to focus so much on venture funding, but angels represent a new movement which is
becoming a very important first step for firms like many of those here.
Tonight, I'd like to speak broadly about what is going on around the Internet and
entrepreneurship. A sweeping economic transformation is underway, one of enormous size and
scope with huge opportunities and risks. At the heart of this transformation are
netpreneurs, the innovative people who are creating products and services which are for or
delivered over digital networks. Who these people are, where they are, why they are doing
it and what they are learning is a truly fascinating story. The Internet is the vehicle
for this change, but the driving force is people who seek to take advantage of the
opportunity and gain control over their own destiny.
The Netpreneur Program
The Morino Institute has created a collaborative
arena through the Potomac KnowledgeWay Netpreneur Program.
We purposely focus on netpreneurship, not entrepreneurship in the broader context. We
believe it is a very different process from creating a traditional business, and that the
lessons learned by netpreneurs will eventually affect all businesses in the digital
economy.
By the way, we may be called The Netpreneur Program , but don't let
the Potomac part fool you. We are very broad in our appreciation of rivers and include the
Patapsco in our communityas many of you here tonight know who have been
participating in the Program. One of the unique aspects of our efforts is to ignore
arbitrary boundaries. That's what the Net is about. It both enhances community and
physical space, while, at the same time, breaking down the barriers of jurisdictions.
Don't assume that netpreneurs in Richmond, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, don't talk
to each other. Our regional view focuses on a corridor that goes from north of Baltimore
down to Blacksburg, Virginia, where there is an enormous amount of innovation occurring in
cellular wireless technology. We all have a very common interest, and it doesn't matter
where we are based. We overcome the barriers by forming a community of interest around the
issues that unite us, and entrepreneurship on the Internet is one of those issues.
The Netpreneur Program provides a forum for netpreneurs in this region to share ideas,
learn from one another and establish a sense of community.
If you are a netpreneur, or a prospective netpreneur with an idea, and you need to get
information on how to do banner advertising effectively or branding on the Net, a typical
business assistance group is not going to know what you're talking about. I'm not being
critical; it's a fact. The only place where this know-how and experience rests is with the
netpreneurs themselvesthe people who are trying it for the first time. You have to
go to the people who are living it day in and day out at businesses like yours, start-ups
all one, two or three years old, rarely older. There needs to be a forum where you can
contact each other, exchange information and share experience. That's all the Netpreneur
Program is really about, creating the forumboth physical and virtualto
facilitate those matches. It's a self-help network cultivating a more seamless flow of
information, ideas and learning.
A Region Poised For Leadership
Our region can be remarkably successful in the new economy. We have an advantage here,
located at the confluence of three industries: telecommunications, information technology
and contenteach of which is experiencing rapid growth and change. That convergence
is a global phenomenon, but we are at its center, with significant core competencies in
each and with the potential to dominate the "bookends" of communications and
content.
On the one bookend, this is the epicenter of telecommunications, not only in the United
States, but for the world. If you go down the corridor, from Baltimore to Blacksburg's
Wireless Valley, you will find the predominance of satellite wireless constructs as well
as terrestrial phone line companies. We're arguably the hub of telecommunications
worldwide.
At the other bookend, you hear so many people say "content is king."
Eventually that will come to passalthough I believe that context will be the most
important part of that kingdom. No region in the world has the sheer raw information
resources and the cultural objects that we possess, whether it's Johns Hopkins or the
National Institutes of Health, in health and biological information like the human genome
project; or the Smithsonian Institution, the largest single collection of art and cultural
histories in the world; or the base of business-to-business newsletters; or the vast
number of trade associations, journalists, political analysts, educators and so many other
"knowledge workers." Go down the list of competencies in this region and you see
graphics talent, media talent, writing talent, research, analysis, journalismall the
talents that will create the products which run on the communications pipes and which will
be managed by the software. We have a 30-year opportunity process in front of us.
We even have competencies in the middle, information technology hardware and software.
Of course, we're nowhere near Silicon Valley, but we're ahead of so many others. Just to
digress, for a moment, I get a little tired of the comparisons to Silicon Valley. The
Valley is the Valley, and no one else is ever going to be the Valley. The Valley is
phenomenal. If you don't believe that, go out there one day, and you'll come back much
more humble. We are not the Valley. We're us, and we have our own strengths.
As I've said, the Internet is the vehicle for this economic transformation. It is the
enabler, but not the driver. Peopleentrepreneursare the driving force. It
isn't like the PC revolution in the '80s, however, or the earlier computing revolutions of
the '60s or '70s . Technology people were the driving force of those movements. Clearly,
technology is at its root, but the revolution is not limited to technologists. Many other
people can participate this time, people from all walks of life who are taking advantage
of this new mediumtechnologically savvy or not. They are trying to create new ways
of communicating, connecting, informing and transacting business. In fact, they are having
a tremendous effect far beyond business, in government, politics, philanthropy, education
and culture.
Let me give you an example of one person, Jean Amour Polly, who runs a Web site out of
her home called Netmom which guides parents to sites
appropriate for kids. It complements an award-winning book she has written on the topic,
which has made her well-known in the field. This former librarian has done deals with
Disney, AOL, the MCI Foundation and is talking to search sites like Webcrawler and Excite,
as well as the Children's Television Network, producers of Sesame Street. Jean's husband
has a full-time job and helps out at night. Two parents working out of their home, doing
what they do because they're interested in it and want to inform parents like themselves.
In the process, they have made a business of it.
It's a small example, but multiply it thousands of times, then add in all the large and
small businesses, the great success stories like Yahoo!, the "life style"
entrepreneurs, the growing string of IPOs, and the thousands of other ventures which are
attracting angel and venture money at unprecedented levels and valuations. The scope is
truly enormous, and the only limitation is imagination, not funding. There is more money
than you can shake a stick at. The money will find you if you have the ideaand, by
the way, our region has a growing presence the funding realm, as well.
The Social Factors
Most of the people in this room are thinking about building a business in the classical
modelcreate the business, get the venture money, go out for an IPO, create
significant net worth.
There are two other models emerging as well, not new, but the number of them and the
opportunities are increasing tremendously because of the Internet. First, there are people
who are not concerned about huge net worth. They want good real income and a stable
environment. They want control of their company, which can become $20 million, $30
million, $40 million companies, easily. The distinction is in the control. They want that
element in their life.
The second pattern, arguably a much bigger one, is the thousands and thousands of
"life style" entrepreneurs like Jean Armour Polly. These are people who, for
whatever reasonmaybe they have been affected by corporate restructurings, or they're
tired of two-hour commutes, or they simply want to spend more time with their
familywant to have control of their lives.
A good friend of mine who worked for Morino Associates, a technology guy, was over at
my home last Friday morning. When he left Morino Associates, he went to one of the first
companies to focus on helping people create virtual corporations. That company cratered,
but he came away with a great knowledge base. Today, he is grossing almost a million
dollars a year working out of his home. He gets up at 5:00 AM and works online governing
his communities until 7:00he has an alarm on his desk. When his little girl, Nicole,
wakes up, the alarm goes off, he goes upstairs, gets the baby and his wife and has
breakfast with his family. When Nicole and his wife leave for school and work, he goes
back downstairs. When they come home, he comes back up again. He is working just as hard
as anybody else, but structured in a way that maximizes his quality of life.
Why is this all happening? The economic transformation is being fed by three
fundamental social forces:
- a growing dissatisfaction with our institutionsgovernment, education, business,
health-care, even nonprofits
- a renewed spirit of entrepreneurism that has been triggered by our growing
dissatisfaction with the status quo
- a revolution in communications that makes it far easier to connect, interact,
collaborate and transact in new ways
The institutional distrust became apparent during the downsizing waves of the late
1980s and early 1990s. The social contract was broken at all levels of the work force. In
1992, a Harvard Business School professor did a study of the MBA class of '74. More than
one-third of the graduates had been fired or laid off at least once in their careers. Here
is a group that's at the top of the business world, the elite. What is the class of
74 doing? The majority now work for themselves or in small companies. Only 23% work
for big companies.
I grew up in southeast Cleveland on the other side of the tracks. We didn't have
muchmy family comes from the mining towns in western Pennsylvania. I watched when
the mines shut down in the 1950s and I saw families with educated people starve. I watched
my cousins get in a car on Sunday night and drive to Cleveland to work in a factory Monday
through Friday in order to survive. They'd come back home on weekends to see their
families. This went on for two and three years until the economic climate in Pennsylvania
changed. I watched Ohio go through a 13% unemployment rate in the early 1980s. People are
sick of this dependency, and the Net is a remarkable enabler, if you want to reach for the
brass ring.
Harvard MBAs are just the tip of the iceberg. We see a lot of netpreneurs who are
people in their 20s and 30s. They jump from very secure jobs into start-ups because
they're bored with traditional organizations. The pace of change is simply too slow; it's
too hard to get things done; they aren't getting opportunities to learn new skills fast
enough. Does this sound familiar?
It's not just the young; it's the young at heart. At a recent Netpreneur Program
meeting the importance of team building was being discussed. Someone drew a connection
between youth and the fast pace of Net businesses, and an older gentleman stood up to say,
"I'm 65 years old, I have just become a netpreneur, and I'm reborn!" It has
nothing to do with age; it's attitudinal. Are you ready for change? Are you ready to deal
with change as a constant? The kids are almost adjusted to it because they accept it as
the status quo.
Ironically, the Internet levels the playing field, but it also increases our dependency
on one another because of the emphasis on communications. While it frees us from
traditional institutions and intermediaries which have limited us, it simultaneously makes
our collaboration skills paramount. Some people catch this and others struggle with it.
Symbols Of The New Business Model
Who gets it? Which companies are showing us the way to the digital economy? Look at
some of the companies right here in Greater Baltimore:
- There's the stunning growth and success of Sylvan
Learning under Doug Becker's leadership, an example of the new hybrid business models
that are evolving. Now in a distance learning venture with Johns Hopkins, MCI and Sylvan's
Caliber partnership plans to deliver the
Johns Hopkins "Business of Medicine" course to doctors through their network of
high-tech classrooms linked nationwide by interactive video and computer technology. Just
yesterday, Caliber announced it would be working similarly with the Wharton School at the
University of Pennsylvania. Whether it's Sylvan or Phoenix or the Governor's Virtual
University on the West Coast, we're watching the educational market get turned on its ear.
- Consider the resourceful and innovative service provided by Community
of Science, led by Huntington Williams, III, which offers Web information products and
publishing services that link researchers, universities, R&D corporations,
professional societies, government agencies and foundations around the world. It's a
classic Internet-enabled service.
- In many ways, Craig Ziegler and his team at GR8 typify
the opportunity of this new economy. Originally, a graphics design firm, this is a group
that truly reinvented itself. They recognized that technology would become a core part of
the graphics design area and jumped in with both feet. Today, they are positioned as one
of the top graphics and marketing design firms on the Web. When I first met Craig almost
two years ago, he described what their graphic artists had done with the
technologyprojects more complex than some of my technologist friends are capable of
doing, yet they were graphics people. It's a perfect model for what's happening in this
world, and why this revolution is so different from the PC revolution. People from other
disciplines grasping the use of the technology, adapting it, reinventing themselves and
moving to the head of the parade.
Education. Research. Graphics design. What's most appealing about the transformation is
that it is opening up new economic opportunities to a very broad base of our population,
that spans diverse industries, cultures and socio-economic levels.
The companies I mentioned are not the only ones here in Baltimore, not by a long shot.
There's CSTI, CyberSystem Technology; Infinite Technologies; Riparius; Information
Resource Engineering; Proteus; Glows in the Dark Studios; CyberStrand Cafe; Final Touch
Software; Skyline Network Technology; K2 Design; Original Reusable Objectsthe list
goes on and on.
You can go to almost any city in the country today and find this same phenomenon. Why?
Because it's based on individual, human intellectual capital.
The Unique World Of Netpreneurs
What possesses men and women to become netpreneurs? A sense of independence, innovation
and a willingness to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges are traits which first
come to mind. In this regard, they stand firmly in the stalwart tradition of American
entrepreneurship. If you get discouraged easily, this is not the space for you.
What sets netpreneurs apart is not that they are different from other entrepreneurs,
but that they are operating in a universe of transforming change. As pioneers of the new
networked society, they are both defining and learning new ways of doing business that
will, in turn, cascade down to change how all of us will earn a living, learn, take care
of our health, govern our jurisdictions and interact with our family, friends and
communities. What they are doing today is what the world will be doing 10 and 20 years
from now.
So what makes this world unique? Here are the eight attributes we see most often.
- 1. Speed
- With advances in computing, the impact of globalization, changing expectations of
stakeholders and the emergence of the Net, the pace of change is faster than ever. Simply
put, speed has become a defining characteristic of the new business culture. Once people
talked about product design in two-year cycles. I'm working with an incubator group up in
Boston that wants to turn out Web products every four monthsevery four months.
Another group we work with has a product release cycle of 120 days. Five years ago, it
took us 120 days to figure out what we were going to put in a product; now it's the
release cycle itself.
- 2. Adaptability
- The pace of change around the Net requires that a business be much more flexible and
adaptive than ever before. You must be adept at reading, interpreting and responding
rapidly to changes wherever and whenever they occurwhether in technology, new
competitors or shifts in markets and buyer patterns. I'll give you a case in point. Those
who have been in the Web long enough know that we went through a period when it was
thought that sponsorship would be a significant way of supporting Web sites. That thinking
eventually disappearedafter only six months, I might addbut one company we
were involved with got caught on the wrong side of the argument. They didn't read it
right, and they were done when the sponsorship trend died. If you aren't ready to come off
a wrong idea fast and change your business plan, boom, it's extinction.
- 3. Experimentation
- Netpreneurs must be willing to try out new ideas in the marketplace. You dont have
the time or the empirical base for traditional "market research" to evaluate an
action. Experiment and be ready to move quickly to adapt to what the market tells you. The
best firms today realize that you have to do your research in the marketplace. You have to
get the product out the door, experiment, live with it and adapt. Oracle and Microsoft are
good examples. They have always pushed their products to market as fast as possible,
because they know a designer can never, ever understand what the market ultimately wants.
The longer you sit in your lab designing, the further you are from your final solution. On
the Net, especially, you've got to get out there rapidly, try a technique, be prepared to
adjust it, pull it back, modify it, move it. We are talking about Web site modifications
which are taking place in hours, while reading user patterns.
- 4. Constant Innovation
- Today, getting the product to market is only the start of the journey. The market's
unrelenting demand for improvement makes it imperative that businesses focus on
innovation. As a result, what the netpreneur experiences today, in the demand for constant
innovation, will eventually be business as usual for the organizations of tomorrow. I
remember once in the late 1970s, in the days of time-sharing networks, I was giving a
seminar on this topic and trying to illustrate to our clients how dramatic change could
be. In a single two-week period, IBM had announced 1,800 products. Today, we are seeing
product announcements by the minute. If you are trying to keep all of this in your head,
you don't stand a chance. No one's that bright. You must build human networks of people
you can turn to for sharing and collecting this information.
- 5. A Multi-Disciplinary Approach
- Net companies are creating successful solutions by integrating diverse
disciplinestechnology, content, graphics, services and relationships. The
traditional business world calls these hybrids, but they may well represent the norm for
the new economy. Amazon.com, which is probably still frail in the long haul, has been so
remarkable in this integration. You see the easy transaction involved in getting a book,
but you may not realize the enormous market branding they've created in the process. Look
at the subtlety with which they create discussion forums to help you with a purchase. Look
at how they've used agent technology to automatically go out and find information for you.
This is remarkable integration. When somebody oversimplifies the Amazon.com model, they
are missing point. It's a great example of innovative, integrated work in the marketplace.
It's not a hybrid model, it's the way sites are going to have to look and the way
businesses are going to have to function.
- 6. Collaboration
- The Net is inherently collaborative. You can't work alone in a medium moving at this
speed. It enables you to engage and involve stakeholders at every step of the way. Simply
put, the knowledge is too great, the markets and technology move too quickly, and the
demands on netpreneurs are too high for one person or one business to go it alone.
As a creator of products, the thing I find most fascinating about the Net today is that
you should never again have an internal question. What do I mean by that? If you are a
developer, or even a development team, and you are making decisions about an option by
yourself, you deserve what you'll get. You must have a network of clients and critics and
people you can go to when you have an idea or a question. You should be able to say,
"I want the opinion of these 15 people who know this space." The emails should
go out and in two, three, 24 hours, you've got answers coming back. You're pulsing your
market, every step of the way. This is not about marketing; it's about running a business,
from product conception, through development, quality assurance testing, distribution,
sales and support.
Pulsing is a whole new phenomena. Great Internet people have understood it as a norm. I
believe the Web actually retarded the concept of pulsing for a while. Before the Web, you
had to go to the Net and ask people for help. When the Web came along, we thought it was
our best solution, but it was actually somewhat more of a display vehicle. We've come full
circle now, where great Web sites are highly interactive, so you can ask people for
assistance. They create the mechanisms for communication and collaboration.
7. A Distribution-Driven Model
The real challenge in todays business world is distributionthe dissemination
of your brand and identity and of your products or service. In one sense, the Net lowers
barriers to entry with regard to distribution, but, to sustain success, businesses must
focus their efforts and be aggressive in building their brand and distribution channels.
As so many people have discovered, you can have the greatest invention in the world, but
the person with the best channel wins. End of discussion. When you complain about a vendor
who has inferior product, woe to you, because you're the one using the channel. You're
buying because their channel is reaching you.
In the Net world, this means you can't just stick something on the Web and expect people
to find and buy it. Great Web sites cultivate brand and reach in a market. The businesses
or organizations find you and cultivate a reaction. That's a distribution channel. You, or
your competitor, can have an entire physical sales force using phones and email as well,
selling the same product you are selling on the Net today. How do you build your channels?
Who are you working through? How do you reach the target audience? These are the most
critical factors of success in the Net world today.
Some years back, I was on a keynote panel at UNIX Expo when somebody in the audience
made a comment about how distribution costs would drop because of the Internet. Another
panelist, who ran the QVC Network in its early stages on the Net, replied that QVC was
spending two dollars in marketing for every dollar they saved in distribution.
Depending upon what you want to do, it can be expensive to market on the Net. If you are
Jean Armour Polly, and you're going after a target audience of 20,000 people for an income
of $150,000 a year, you don't have a big marketing problem. If, however, you are going
head-to-head with America Online (AOL), you'd better be ready to write some seven- and
eight-digit checks for marketing. That's why Steve Case is so brilliant. He understands
branding and market channels. AOL has become the de facto portal site for consumers.
That's why, when Bob Pittman came in, he changed the whole revenue model of AOL. Instead
of paying people to come on AOL, people now pay to get on AOL because they own the
eyeballs.
8. Niche-Focused Markets
The Nets reach and distribution open up new market opportunities. Netpreneurs
focus on well-defined market sectorsnicheswhere they can achieve a dominant
position or discover unserved markets. In fact, the really exciting opportunities lie in
creating new ones. Look at Amazon.com again. They went after the hard-to-find,
seldom-referenced books. They're not making their money selling the titles from the New
York Times Bestseller List. Barnes & Noble and Borders do that. They went after the
niches and back list books, then they grew from that niche. You have to know the niche
you're trying to reach and how you are going to reach it.
Who's Got Your Back?
These eight traits which characterize the netpreneur's world are each daunting.
Together they represent a powerful force and a paradigm shift. Yet, for both netpreneurs
and established players, the real risk lies in the embryonic nature of this economic
frontier. Their greatest threat may come from a company which has not yet been formed or a
technology which has not yet been introducedthe next generation browser, a successor
to Yahoo! or a new "killer app". That's the uncanny part.
There's a line that Andy Groves has made famous, "Only the paranoid survive."
In the Net world, only the really paranoid survive. You can be cruising along as the
glamour child when, suddenly, someone comes up with a new idea and, bingo, they've got
your market. The way you combat this is by getting brand and entrenchmentlike Yahoo!
or AOL have done, or Amazon.com to a lesser degree. You hold off penetration by creating a
barrier to entry that's vested in a psychological brand.
Growing A Coral Reef
Don't let that last thought diminish your paranoia, however. The next product may be in
development right now in a student dorm at Johns Hopkins; a teenager's bedroom in Towson;
the basement of a person who recently got laid-off in Bel Aire; one of the new-age
incubators, like the American Can Factory; or over coffee by two people at the CyberStrand
Cafe. Don't expect them to come from typical places.
Some years back, James Roth, the CEO of GRC, a technology services firm, was discussing
the delicate and fragile nature of entrepreneurial environments. He used an analogy to
drive home his point saying, "Entrepreneurial areas are similar to coral reefs. We
dont know how to create them, but we can nurture them with support or kill them with
neglect."
The key to helping netpreneurs flourish is to build a support network of other
netpreneurs around them, then adding a second support network of venture capitalists and
funders. Advisors, professionals, service providers and everybody else will fill in the
open spaces. It's the communitycollectively you become powerful, not individually.
You must understand the core competencies of the region and build from there, because the
geographical centers of innovation and entrepreneurship have forces that create the
corethe critical mass of technology firms in Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas; the
knowledge and wealth of Microsoft in Seattle; the universities in Boston/Cambridge; the
convergence of telecom, Internet, biotech and content in Baltimore/Washingtonthese
are the cores from which a new generation of entrepreneurial start-ups emerge.
We must nurture communities that support netpreneurs to help them help
themselvesmuch like the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley has done. This is about
human networking, getting to know one another, building trust, using Web-based forums,
email discussion groups, chat rooms and old-fashioned, face-to-face meetings like this
one.
It is not about public policy, not directly, nor is it about giving an entrepreneur a
crutch. I think that's the worst thing you can do. An entrepreneur has to learn to jump
the hurdles or he won't succeed. Anybody who is helping you the wrong way can be doing you
a disservice. The greatest thing we can do, sometimes, is to help someone realize that
they're not an entrepreneur or that they're not ready yet. The other great thing is to
encourage them when they are, and to help them keep going when they're down.
Exciting Times And Exciting Opportunities
These are exciting times and there is much underway in Baltimore and certainly across
the broader Baltimore/Washington corridor. Consider, just for starters:
- the enormous base of bio-informatics and genetic research that sits here at Johns
Hopkins and in the rest of this region, as well as telemedicine delivery and remote
diagnostic capabilities which will fuel growth for many years to come
- the investment leadership of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), GroTech, JMI, Anthem
Capital and others
- recent technology financings such as those by BT Alex Brown and Legg-Mason
- cottage industries blossoming around such areas as the smart agent technologies coming
from the University of Maryland, Baltimore
- Neil Kleinman's new era communications program at the University of Baltimore
- the incubation activity of the American Can Factory
- educational partnerships such as the Maryland Information Technology Institute
- the newly-established Abell Fund as they begin to work closely with Baltimore-based
netpreneurs
- the Greater Baltimore Council and the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association continuing to
nurture the tech community
- and, most importantly, the scores of young netpreneur businesses emerging in the area
Things are happening. It's an exciting opportunity. Actually, it can sometimes be
numbing to see so many exciting things in a day. When you're struggling at night, trying
to figure out why you're doing this, when it seems like you're beating your head against
the wall, keep something in mindwe're talking about nearly $10 billion of net worth
in this region from companies that did not exist when this decade started. The next Yurie
or Ciena or Yahoo! or AOL may be sitting in this audience tonight. I wish you all the
success those companies have had. |
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