To Internet entrepreneur and consultant Ned Stringham, the dot-com bust certainly was a major disappointment,at least in terms of the financial markets. In terms of changing the way people interact and do business, however, the dot-com phenomenon was tremendously successful — and continues to be successful today. "People keep using the Internet today, and that is the really exciting thing," he says. In fact, retail on-line sales blew past the $100 billion mark in 2003 for the first time and will likely go even higher this year.
So, while others dithered in the wake of the dot-com bust or retreated to lick their wounds or gave up altogether, Stringham jumped into action and began collecting an assortment of wounded Internet consulting companies under the SBI Group umbrella. Where others saw nothing but a disaster, he saw an opportunity and leaped at it, acquiring companies at fire sale prices. The acquisitions may now appear to have been incredible bargains, but they didn't appear that way to many people then. And the process wasn't exactly fun and games. The acquisitions required painful restructuring and inevitably involved the laying off of many people, a task Stringham still recalls as horrible.
The people pain associated with the dot-com collapse made an impression on Stringham. If he weren't an Internet consultant and entrepreneur, he suggests wistfully, he might like to do something that has a more direct, positive impact on the world. The impact from his work today tends to be indirect.
Although many large companies retreated from the Internet and Web following the dot-com bust, Stringham continued to believe in on-line interaction and understood that the large companies would have to come back sooner or later. When they did, they would need a knowledgeable partner to develop their Web-based systems and integrated marketing programs, which he saw as essential to them for increasing revenues, building customer relationships, and boosting operational performance. Today, the eight-year-old company employs 750 employees and has seen revenues grow 77 percent in the past year.
Success did not come easily. It was difficult to pay hard cash for companies few wanted in an industry many were more than willing to write off. The restructuring decisions proved difficult, and laying off good people hurt. He spent a lot of time, maybe too much time, on the road and away from his family. But Stringham was buoyed by the vision that on-line commerce indeed would rebound, that he was preserving many jobs, and that he would be able to hire even more people in the future. Now he is shifting his focus from acquisition to organic growth and is expanding the company's geographic reach through partnerships in Japan and Europe. — A.R.
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