Damn Dotcoms!

Things are going good for you-or at least they should be.

Your 10-year-old company is going great guns. You're one of the region's top companies in your industry, with plenty of work and money pouring into your bank account. Your kids are healthy. Your spouse adores you. even the company softball team is coming around. So why can't you shake that lingering bitterness, even anger? Easy-you're not a dotcom company with a windfall IPO and three years of heavy losses. Let's face it, the media doesn't love you the way they do the Web folks. Same with Wall Street and its army of analysts, most of whom swoon and lapse into lovestruck gibberish at the sight of a new Internet IPO. The venture capital folks? Not today, friend. Even the American public is letting you down. They nod your way when you walk down the street, but you know what they're thinking. You're no dotcom.

You don't do e-commerce the way the mavericks do. You don't have a market capitalization equal to the annual budget of Portugal. You're just so . . . pedestrian, aren't you?

This article was originally published in the August 2000 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Damn Dotcoms!.