
Wednesday November 08, 2006
A recent paper suggests that rather than having too
many entrants, the period of the Web bubble may have had too few; at
least, too few of the right kind. And while most people recall the
colossal flops of the period (Webvan, pets.com, etoys and the rest) the
survival rates of the era's companies turns out to be on a par, if not
slightly higher, than those in several other major industries in their
formative years.
The paper is being published in a coming issue of the
Journal of Financial Economics. As noteworthy as the findings are, even
more interesting is the process that led to them. The work is an
outgrowth of the Business Plan Archive at the University of Maryland.
Its goal is to become a kind of Smithsonian Institution of the Internet
bubble, saving for posterity every business plan, PowerPoint
presentation and venture-capital term sheet -- the more frothy and
half-baked, the better -- that it can get its hands on.