Wall Street and the Cow
Current market
conditions notwithstanding, what’s the secret to every
entrepreneur’s dream, the successful IPO? The companies that
successfully went public during the Net boom (and those that will
follow when the market comes back) had one thing in common—they’d
created a Purple Cow and proved it.
Whether it was
insanely popular chat sites or beta versions of database software
that key early adopters raved about, each company had a story to
tell the Street. So investors bought in.
Then just about
every company forgot the lesson of the Cow. Instead of taking the
money and using it to create a series of innovations that could
lead to the next Cow (at a higher, bigger level), these companies
took profits. The companies streamlined and mechanized and milked
their Cow. Alas, very few markets are stable enough and fast—or
long growing enough to allow a public company to thrive for very
long. Their days of 20 percent annual growth are probably gone
forever.