Who wants to be a millionaire

In the 1990s, the stock markets decided that Internet companies were the future of business. When these companies wanted to borrow money, the stock markets were happy to help them. In fact, everybody wanted to buy stocks in these new companies, so the price of stocks went up and up. New Internet companies were formed every day and they all found it very easy to borrow money.

Two young business people in Britain called Brent Hobermann and Martha Lane Fox borrowed 600,000 pounds to start an Internet company called lastminute.com. The idea of the company was to give people at home a chance to buy flights, theatre tickets, and other goods at the last minute; this way they could get them very cheaply. They started their website in 1998, and after eighteen months, 800,000 people were using it.

In March 1999, Hobermann and Fox sold part of their company. More than 200,000 people bought stocks in the company, and Hobermann and Fox became very rich. At that time, the value of the company was 732 million pounds. It was one of the big success stories of the Internet business world – for a few days.

Suddenly, the world of Internet business changed. People started to realize that there were too many Internet companies, and the companies were not making money. The price of stocks in Internet companies went down quickly. Many other Internet companies had serious problems and went out of business.

For example, Boo.com was a company that sold clothes over the Internet. Buyers could look at the goods from all sides before they spent any money. It seemed like a good idea, but the website was too slow. Boo.com spent millions of pounds on advertisements and on computer software, but the company never made any money. Most people continued to buy their clothes in clothes shops. In May 2000, Boo.com went out of business.

Looking back, it is clear that people were too quick to give money to new Internet companies. They were too many and they could not succeed. Internet business is the same as other kinds of business: only the best companies are successful.

(from Commerce by Paul A.Davies, Oxford Bookworms Factfiles, Oxford University Press 2000)

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