Dot-Commoners

Well, the glory days of the web are over according to financial analysts across the nation.

Companies are finding out that web-based business is much more expensive than "business as usual" and it's eaten heavily into their profit margin.

Too bad if you ask me.

I for one am glad to see that the typical corporate greed caused a lot of companies to write losses on their books. It's sad that many of the new Internet startups had to die as well, but people are resilient, and I have no doubt that many of those that lost in the Internet are going to come back fighting in the "standard" world of business, and take over where the corporations that tried to plunder the Internet left off, but with some computer savvy, and hopefully a sense of ethics.

The last several years were a blessed diversion from the normal world of corporate politics and competition. Anyone that wanted to put a storefront online could do so in a few hours, whereas the large companies had to spend months or even years developing theirs. This turned out to be their downfall. They could certainly offer lower prices than any online startup competitor, but they didn't, for fear of hurting their own business in the "brick-and-mortar" world. Meanwhile many new companies were able to come in and overwhelm the larger, more ponderous companies by sacrificing their profit margin, and offering lower pricing. The big corporations were stung, and now they seem to be in a full retreat.

I hope the bloodsuckers stay well away from the Internet for a while, long enough for you and I to get well established as "dot-commoners".

I can just hear the corporate presidents now sneering at us with that turn of phrase.

"Let the dot-commoners eat cake." As if they were the Bourgeois rulers of France a couple hundred years ago.

And we shall, until our own Bastille Day, when we rise up and overwhelm the big corporations that feel they have the right to tell us what color of tie to wear, much less that we should wear one at all.

Most corporations have no idea where their talent lies, and instead of digging in and breeding creative strength, they have chosen to focus on the stockholder dollar. Is it just American executives of these maleficent companies who have forgotten that at retirement their self-indulgence will be repaid as they rely on the beneficence of those they have spent so much effort attempting to subvert? Their "golden parachutes" will become just that; heavier than lead, and stuck to their backs like the shackles of those they have enslaved. Their fate will be akin to that of Marley from Dickens' Christmas Carol; damned to eternal agony because of their greed and selfishness.

What of fidelity? The duty to mentor those upon your which your future will depend? The growth and continued vitality of a country is not unlike growing a tree; the energy derived from its efforts is focused downward, strengthening the roots and feeding the young, while sustaining the older leaves and branches.

The elder branches do not exist to be creative and vibrant. The elder is but a guiding force and a source of strength. An elder can't use energy as it once did in its youth and should correctly pass it onto the new growth.

This should be the same for business executives, passing on their experience to the fledglings, and bringing them into power much faster than they could alone. Likewise, elder, established companies should help new businesses grow by buying a majority share and then actually spinning them off into their own market once again when they have matured into a viable business; instead of stripping their assets and selling off what isn't wanted.

A tiger that eats all of it's young has no ability to sustain the species.

If a company is smart enough to build upon the companies it acquires, and then step out of the way by becoming a non-controlling shareholder, the fledgling business can be successful as well as the parent, due to the their silent stockholdings. Even the shareholders win in this model, since they now own stock in several powerful companies, where before there was only one.

What I propose is not "dot-communism" but rather "dot-competition".

Had Microsoft been wise enough to concede the point of Internet browsers instead of attempting to throw their muscle around, they would have stuck to their core business, and been a stronger, more lean company. Instead, they have forced all of us to pay millions of dollars for their lengthy court cases that will inevitably prove that nobody wins when a company tries to foist it's views of right and wrong on the rest of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the way Microsoft has brought the prices of software and computer OS-es down, but they should have kept their vision in line with their overall business pursuits in the case of the browsers.

No parent is beloved when the children are made to suffer for the parent's lack of vision. When a child is made to pay for the lack of fortitude in its parent, the child is weak. Weak individuals become targets for opportunists. Opportunists are eventually overcome by larger opportunists, and the cycle continues.

By focusing a child corporation's drive to succeed, and helping it to establish sound business practices, and then releasing them to the world at large, a parent will profit immeasurably, even at the cost of a minor loss of business. As the corporate executives should have learned from the breakup of Ma-Bell, Spin-offs mean big money if sound business practices are used, and attention is paid to the children so that they can succeed. So shall it be if the current regimes decide to take the next step, and spin off the businesses they acquire, rather than systematically destroy them for a short-term profit.

Until the time that big businesses see the light, we Dot-Commoners will be the bane of their existence. People will continue to start their small businesses on the Internet, and the megacorps won't have a chance to keep up. As soon as they get to the Internet, there will be something newer and better out there, and their profits will suffer. By infusing the small businesses on the Internet with capital and sound business processes, large corporations can profit from the small company's maneuverability while remaining focused on it's core competencies. As the small company matures, and it is ready to go back out in the world, the parent can profit more by divesting itself of the smaller company's administrative burdens, and taking some of the profits in the form of stocks.

If a business is focused on bringing their presence to the Internet, without modifying their practices, they are surely doomed to failure in the market, due to its volatility. They often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on development that could have been used to buy several startups that have already done the work that they are having to duplicate. When things begin to sour in the market, as they are doing now, you can see that many of the big businesses are more hurt than the little ones.

By turning the equation around, a business that buys a smaller online shop that is just getting established can reap huge rewards with half the expenditures. Everybody wins.

Sadly, many execs are looking to build their ivory towers instead of tending their gardens. Those businesses that are in the same line as the conglomerates are often thought of as weeds, and are target for the conglomerate's wrath. By partnering with the smaller companies, the conglomerates can easily find a "diamond in the rough" from just about any one of the companies it is trying to compete with. The smaller companies have proven that they are willing to try to take on something new, and are willing to take risks to achieve their accomplishments. This is not sound business for the conglomerate, but in order for them to compete, they end up doing it anyway. Usually the smaller businesses will fail in such direct competition, but the cost to the conglomerate is often so high that the blessed shareholders are left wondering how worthwhile the investment was, and they may often sell off their holdings, leaving the conglomerate with lower than expected funding, causing even more financial trouble.

-Robert Spalding
rspaldi@yahoo.com