The Internet Start-Up Bible (Paperback)

There are two frontrunners for this year's technophobe award. One is the man who called his 24 hour computer support hotline wanting to know how to move the cursor on his screen. "Just roll the mouse in whichever direction you want it to go," he was told. "Yes," he replied, "but if I go any further, it's going to fall off the mat." Another is the executive whose introduction to the Web ended in a panicked phone call to his IT department after he mistakenly closed the application on his desktop. "Oh my God," he explained, "I think I've broken the Internet!" Many traditional businesses will have been wishing it was that simple. For the rest, getting online fast has been the order of the day. The online retail market is predicted to grow by more than 400 per cent between 2000 and 2002, reaching an estimated market value of £39 billion by 2005. The message is simple--if you can't break it, join it.

Tess Read, Callum Chace and Simon Rowe's Internet Start-Up Bible is one of the most accessible and intelligently written dot.com guides available. They dispense with the now familiar tale of what the Internet is and how it came about to focus on exactly what an entrepreneur needs to do and how they need to think in order to plan, research, fund, market and design a successful business model on the Internet. They take the logical and too often neglected step of applying the same success criteria to dot.com business start-ups as to traditional ventures. Important sections on the entrepreneurial mindset, the process of shaping ideas into marketable concepts and employing and managing people are included. Detailed chapters on business planning and attracting venture capital are placed at centre stage. Once the fundamentals have been taken care of, the authors dive into the technicalities of Internet business; technology, design, marketing and launch, before concluding with business growth and flotation. Their expertise shines through in the writing, cases studies, extensive links and contact addresses and running quotes from business gurus and key books. The Internet Start-Up Bible is a smart and savvy resource for the fledgling e-business. --Iain Campbell

This pragmatic and authoritative manual shows how to start an online business. The authors examine the legal implications and explain how to identify and evaluate the hype and separate it from the reality of Internet commerce.

So you want to be a dot.com millionaire? Find out how.
The Internet Start-Up Bible is exactly that - the complete and authoritative guide for every internet entrepreneur.

Foreword by Clive Pinder, Viant.com

Introduction: Hype or Revolution?

You - What Does it Take to be an Entrepreneur?

Idea - How to Evaluate it

Plan - How to Write a Business Plan

Legals - The Full Story

Research - Get it Right

Funding - What You Need to Do

Marketing - The Customer is King

Design - First Impressions Count...

Technology - The Technology IS the experience

People - Who Do You Need? How Do You Find Them?

Launch - Take-off

Growing - The Golden Rules

IPO (Flotation) - Bingo!

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet...

Why we wrote this book
As consultants, we work for many private equity firms. They tell us that many - if not most - of the Internet business plans they currently receive are poorly organised, written, thought through or researched. This book should help YOU avoid those pitfalls, and gain that crucial business advantage.

Tess Read - Tess currently works as a consultant for AMR International. AMR advises venture capitalists, banks and companies on investments and acquisitions. From 1993-96 she was the Bank of England's expert on Lloyds of London. She also writes regularly for Euromoney and the World Economic Forum.

Calum Chace - An Oxford graduate, Calum spent two years as a BBC journalist and six years in international marketing with BP before taking an MBA at Cranfield, and moving into management consultancy. Over the last six years, he has helped build one of London's leading niche strategic consulting firms. In this role he has advised investors and management teams on many aspects of e-business. While writing this book on the subject of starting an internet business, he decided it was time to put his theories into practice, so he is currently working on plans for an internet business.

Simon Rowe - Simon is a freelance consultant. After studying history at Cambridge, he worked in London as a financial journalist for the Investors Chronicle and subsequently in Munich. He then worked as an equity analyst covering German companies for Kleinwort Benson and Smith New Court. He now works for a range of consultancies on a freelance basis.

The UK 'ramp' is happening

It is pretty clear that we are seeing a rapid increase in the number of people in the UK with internet access, and, more importantly, in the amount of time people spend using the internet. A survey in late 1999 showed that 10% of UK adults accessed the internet at least once a week. In the US, that was the level of penetration when internet usage started to soar.

Four things need to change in order for internet usage to lift off:

1. It must be faster.

2. It has to offer 'must-have' content ('killer applications').

3. It must be easier to install and maintain.

4. It must be cheaper.

We think the internet is taking off in the UK, and the following factors are providing some of the fuel:

. the arrival of ADSL;

. competition for BT in the 'local loop';

. the launch of internet TV;

. the arrival of day trading.

ADSL

NTL has emerged as the victor in the battle to lead the consolidation of the UK cable industry. This presents BT with a serious threat to their dominance of domestic telephony. BT is responding by announcing the launch of their much-delayed ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) technology, which will bring far greater bandwidth to the home. The cable industry will continue to attack, though, which will force BT to cut its prices significantly over the coming months.

TV or PC?

PC ownership in the home has increased sharply thanks to Freeserve (which was Dixons' original intention). But the TV may well be the appliance through which most domestic viewers access the internet and conduct e-commerce.

There has been a lot of debate about whether the TV or the PC will win the battle to be the main access point in the home for the internet. The PC pundits, led by Intel, argue that TV is a 'lean-back' device, while PCs are 'lean-forward'. They argue that using the internet to carry out e-commerce requires the use of a keyboard and an alert, 'lean-forward' approach. They also point to the slow take-up of WebTV in the US, despite Microsoft's backing.

The promoters of TV argue that TV is already omnipresent, and they claim that digital TV can deliver perfectly adequate navigation techniques to allow viewers to surf the web and conduct e-commerce from the comfort of their armchair.

The jury is still out on this debate. What is almost certain, though, is that the ability to access the internet via the TV will speed up the growth of the internet. Digital TV is becoming established in the UK, and BSkyB is offering Open, an interactive service with limited web access.

Internet TV will have a number of important effects. It will add the role of internet access maintainer to the repertoire of the country's TV repair engineers. It will also lead to the creation of more 'must-have' content on the internet. TV companies (especially Sky) have shown that sport can be a 'killer application' which leads people to buy reception equipment. These companies may well set up sports portals ('sportals') on the internet for the same purpose.