Tech Battle Scars… From Dotcom Bust to Web 3.0

History doesn’t necessarily repeat, but it often rhymes! Sometimes, despite my better judgement, I’m compelled to engage in LinkedIn banter with some young-Techie who is of course hellbent on extoling the virtues of this, that, or the other latest Tech thing. This generally includes a healthy dose of them explaining to me why I “don’t get it” or how I just haven’t taken the opportunity to learn how “it’s different this time.”

This of course always prompts me to wax nostalgic about how I earned my own Tech bona fides, my “street cred”, if you will…cause you can't let that kind of thing go unchecked...

In 2000, I was a junior Big Law associate who had just been poached from private practice by the lure and enticement of Tech glory and dotcom riches. The company, Infospace.com, based in Redmond, Washington (for the uninitiated that is the heart of Microsoft country), was high flyer.

The dotcom era was a heady time to be in Tech. Markets soared higher by the day. We all couldn’t wait to retire, write our memoirs, start an Indie band…But just like some of these latter day cryptos, the dotcom boom was a death-race borne of a Faustian bargain. Would my stock options vest before the stock market ultimately imploded? Even the most zealous among us knew the party wouldn’t last forever.

Naveen Jain, our founder and CEO had made a fair amount of wealth from his prior career at Microsoft but nothing compared to what he made by founding and taking Infospace public. In fact, by the time I joined the company, he was already counted amongst the ranks of a newly minted class of Internet/Tech billionaires. 

Naveen was quite charismatic, and anytime he appeared on CNBC or was interviewed by Wired, Dotcom or any of the rash of publications of that era, our stock price was guaranteed to pop at least 10 points. In those days there was no better friend, and as it would ultimately turn out, no greater nemesis than that ever-streaming stock ticker scrolling across the bottom of your screen (that was one App we all had). 

Not surprisingly, when the dotcom bubble did finally pop our shares got pounded like a boxer in an MMA match. We were lucky, at least the company had managed to find some profit. That little bit of earnings held the stock price together for a time, but the market cap was still too high. The company continued on for a good while but it was never quite the same.

But then, as now, the bust was only the beginning of the tale.

The real story is that the company created a group of alumni. Like so many other dotcomers, those alums went on to seed new ventures, found new companies, start VC and PE Funds, etc., as well as take their expertise back to some of the bigger (more traditional) companies they had been hired away from.

For my part, when I returned to private practice, I took with me the battle scars of a Tech veteran. I’m proud of those scars as they have served me in good stead in the years that have ensued. 

So, to all of you blockchainers, bitcoiners, ethereumites, and those of like ilk, it is not different this time. The cycle of ups and downs will continue and some household names will lose their luster and fade into oblivion. Some of you will become shockingly rich, while others will be left to only ponder what might have been…

And perhaps that is the moral of this new Web 3.0 story that is still being written…And I say this most pointedly to the young Techies in Oman and the GCC. When it comes to building a vibrant technology-based ecosystem, a certain kind of knowledge (experience & know-how), has to be built-up throughout the system. That knowledge is invaluable. That knowledge is, of course, the knowledge of failure, served up with a healthy bit of disappointment, and a liberal dose of cynicism because...

Like the dotcom era and web 1.0, in this age of Web 3.0, 5G and cryptos, there will be just as many seeds to be sown from the bust as there are the boom.

Peace and Godspeed.