The Dot.Bomb Survival Guide [Hardcover]

Recess is long over, and it's back to school for failed entrepreneurs. The Dot.Bomb Survival Guide: Surviving (and Thriving) in the Dot.Com Implosion, by branding genius Sean Carton, dissects the 90s to show what worked--and what didn't.

Pouring ruthlessly over the remains of AllAdvantage, BigWords and other dot-comedies of errors, he shines light on the mistaken assumptions and dodgy strategies that dragged them down to the landfill of history. But knowing what not to do can't guarantee success, so Carton also examines plenty of healthy companies, including several he was involved with professionally.

What do investors want to see? When is new tech good tech? Has the Internet really changed anything, and how? These questions should be on the minds of every serious start-up developer, and The Dot.Bomb Survival Guide lays out the answers for all those ready to learn from the past. --Rob Lightner

Dot.Bomb: Surviving (and Thriving) In the Dotcom Implosion reveals the mistakes that failed dotcoms made, as well as the attributes of the successful ones. By dissecting what worked and what went wrong, today's ebusinesses can successfully navigate the thin line between big bucks and bust. Over the past few years, the New Economy has launched some spectacular fortunes...and some equally spectacular catastrophes. April of 2000 marked the beginning of a shake out of dotcoms and ebusiness enterprises, and put the risk back in to IPOs. We're watching more dotcoms go bust every day, and many more charge toward their financial cliffs. Why have some companies soared to multi-billion dollar valuations while others have bitten the dust? Just as a postmortem can reveal details that led to medical insights that save lives, taking a look at the lifeless corpses of dead online companies can teach valuable lessons for today's ebusinesses that want to say alive and thrive in the New Economy. Dot.Bomb takes a look at a number of prominent dotcom successes and failures to discover what worked, what went wrong and what business lessons can be learned from the mistakes - By comparatively illustrating the right way to do it. Each chapter will concentrate on a specific element that led to failure: flawed business plans, not knowing the customer, constructing the wrong business team, neglecting to ever complete a working product, high risk/short term thinking, over-hyping the product, bad funding deals, and misguided mergers and acquisitions. It will then feature a company that excelled in that area to reach success. In some cases, the most cursory marketing analysis would have shown that the issue for many dotcoms was not awareness, but preference and purchase building, which requires a different approach than appearing on the Super Bowl. Digging through the smoking wreckage, we'll look at how the crash could have been avoided and how the mistakes of the dead can lead to successful strategies for the living. Using sober analysis, Dot.Bomb will skim the dotcom death pool and the winner's circles for strategies to help the reader's ebusiness survive. Included will be interviews with doomed workers who saw the bust coming, a review of some of the nuttier cultures and hiring practices, a burn-rate-o-meter, ideas that (thankfully) never made it, post-mortems from VC's and analysts as well as handy "autopsy chart" summaries. This book marks the end of the dotcom hype. Author and industry guru, Sean Carton, sits courtside and examines the right and wrong moves in the dotcom game. Managers and executives will be wary to miss this opportunity to glean tips and advice on how to ensure their dotcom survival and which uses real-life examples to illustrate it. More than anecdotes and trend research, Dot.Bomb provides substantial evidence to guide dotcom pioneers onward and upward.