The Poster Boys for the Internet Bubble

Mar 02 2001

Is hubris in the DNA of Net types? According to several splashy features in the glossy financial magazines, all signs point to a recombinant strain of executive fatheadedness.

Fortune chose Idealab's Bill Gross for its new cover profile of three "dot-com diehards," and in the story by Joseph Nocera, Gross is portrayed as a man who created Idealab on the backs of investors who mistook his charisma for business acumen. He then ran through $800 million in eight months. The good news for individual investors? Idealab recently canceled plans for its much-ballyhooed IPO. And despite spending several paragraphs on Gross' intellect, Nocera made it clear he has second thoughts about Gross' abilities: "There was just no getting around it," Nocera conceded. "He seemed perfectly capable of making the same mistakes all over again."

ECompany's March roundup of Net types and their collective wisdom has the same unrepentant feel. Mistakes, these guys have made a few. But mostly the players interviewed here are as hooked on hyperbole and testosterone-charged blather as they ever were

For candor, we liked USA Networks ' Barry Diller reminiscing about deeming AOL too pricey to acquire in 1994. In retrospect, the price was "absurdly low," he recalls. "But we were too stupid to accept it."

There's also Michael Dell identifying the real losers in the whole Net stock mess. The biggest waste of money, Dell said, was the investment in "companies with so-called new-economy business models. Business fundamentals haven't changed, and a lot of investors lost sight of that - and are paying for it."