Abstract
Presents a slightly ironic view of the current trends in Internet business as exemplified by the proliferation of ‘dot.com’ companies and the seemingly limitless potential they appear to offer to investors. Notes that any lessons which could have been learned from business models developed by other virtual finance sectors or the French Minitel experience, have been largely unheeded. Faced with this set of circumstances, many investors, jobholders and job seekers have opted to jettison previously held and tested belief systems and to adopt the new visions of a virtual world more or less uncritically. Examines the new economy in the light of the current dot.com shakeout in order to carry out a reality check. Argues that the mistake of the new economy was to reject wholesale financial and business practices which had been perfected over time and to assume that they had no place in the new economy. Future success will lie with the marrying of the best of the new and the old established practices.
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