Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The Web = San Francisco circa 2001

A rumination on why dotcoms failed, and on what the future might bring.

Here was a city cross-hatched by freeways that each felt just a little too dangerous to walk under. Coupled with a lack of decent public transportation, it meant there were loads of communities slightly too small to support really big stores or specialist shops. I was seeing, in short, a city in which home delivery made a ton of sense: pet supplies, groceries, late night snacks...

2 comments:

Tim said...

Interesting conceptual premise, although I think he errs in referring to San Francisco when the Peninsula and Valley fit his model better.

Tim said...

oh, and his time frame is off, too. I was at Excite in 1999-2000, and was in the first round of layoffs in 2001. All those wacky business models weren't a product of 2001, they were already spending their venture capital long before then.