10 January 2022
Fake-It/Make-It
The widespread model of the Internet Boom was to come up with an appealing idea and hope that persistent enthusiasm will convince an angel investor to finance the development of an online service that will gain enough momentum to make its creators rich. This was the story of Mideast Online.
Invented by a galvanizing South Asian middle-manager who attracted seed capital from other Asian entrepreneurs, it built a small staff of starry-eyed American professionals and collapsed without income in the technology crash of 2000. The founder died of a heart attack soon thereafter.
Was the concept too small, or was it unsuited to its chosen market? Why did Alibaba succeed in China and much of Asia, at least to the point that its creator reaped large rewards. In the end, it has also fallen on hard times, nevertheless. Internet technology tools seem to have been absorbed by specific manufacturing or service enterprises as part of their business models. Stand-alone B-to-B internet services seem to have become scarce, been absorbed, or collapsed.
The internet enterprises that have thrived were built on the realization that the services they provide only have value to the extent that they can attract users access to whom advertisers are willing to pay for. MEOL either ignored this key to viability or didn't cultivate a target universe that advertisers were willing to pay for.
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