Date: April 2, 2000

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The Industry Standard's "iB2B: The Other 95% of Internet Business" was
held March 22-25, 2000, at the Boca Resort & Club, Boca Raton, Florida
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Dear Clients, Partners, Friends, and Fellow B2Beings:

Hello, again! After a long winter of hard Internet labor in e-content, e-retailing, and e-startup land, I finally managed to get back on the conference trail. To do what I love: cover the best-of-the-best in Internet events and report back to you, my faithful readers, "All the Dot-Com Buzz That's Fit to Email."

This latest trek was, yet again, an experience to be remembered....

It was a gorgeous scene as I pulled in early last Wednesday afternoon, at the height of Florida's spring-break season....hot rays, soft breezes, palms trees a-swayin', beaches beckoning, beautiful people everywhere....winding into the driveway of the stately old, sprawling resort called the Boca Resort & Club, complete with its requisite "pink palace" and meticulously groomed gardens. Wow, this looked like....well, a great place to take a vacation! But alas, a conference was awaiting me....

...and actually more than 800 of us crazed business-to-business believers, who were now converging on this high-brow East Coast vacation spot. All clamoring to get another chance to hear the Great Minds of the New Economy lay it all out for us....drink once more from the Internet Font (Firehose?) of Knowledge....engage in the latest Internet sport (B2C bashing)....then all go back to impress hell out of our friends, mothers, bosses, whatever -- assuring them all we really *were* working. (And maybe make another killing in the market with all the tips we'd scored.)

The Boca Resort had better be big, I thought, because this shindig would be packed--sold out, they told us, long before arrival time. In fact, some 400 Johnny-come-latelys had to be turned away in the final few days prior to the event, I was to learn later. Those of us arriving now in droves by cab (us press folk)--or limo, Benz, Beemer (most of the rest)--were the lucky ones....

...the B2B chosen few of the day, as it were, who would--thank you very much--solve all the problems of the known world of e-business before we were done. And party our brains out in between, thank you again. (Hey, this working all the time does have its advantages once in a while, at least when you can be working in a place like this.)

And God bless The Industry Standard for throwing these crazy New Economy 3-Day Sabbaticals! So we all don't go entirely insane, staring at screens, pounding on keyboards, doing deals all day long, for weeks and months on end.

I'd actually been day-dreaming for months about the last great event of theirs I attended, "NetReturns 2000" in September in Aspen. Wow, what an awesome experience. (Those of you who were there don't need an explanation.) Was this one as good? No. But how could it be? And, after all, this B2B stuff is, like, soooo serious! Changing the world economy as we know it, and all that stuff....

But Boca was a fun time, and another real learning experience. And The Standard definitely does these events right -- with all the best in logistics, staff, efficiency, organization, food, giveaways, and extracurricular activities. The program? Great--though some parts missed the mark. The schmooze meter: off the dial, dude! And the parties? Well, like I said, how crazy can you expect a bunch of B2B guys to get, anyway? But more on all that later. Plus the cigars, body surfing, deep-sea fishing....blah, blah, blah

For now, just some highlights (with additional dispatches to follow soon, if you reply to this email with a "yes," that is...otherwise we'll not intrude again):

eSoundbites from iB2B:

"What is B2B? Everything that happens to a product before it hits the retail shelf."
-Larry Downes, event co-host, and author, "Unleashing the Killer App"

"How big is B2B? Heck, the whole economy is the B2B play!"
-Jon Battelle, CEO, The Industry Standard, in his opening comments
(the audience vote later had 32% pegging it at $9 trillion--the size of the U.S.
economy--and another 16% choosing an even higher figure, $40 trillion!)

"The uptake in B2B takes longer. Systems integration takes a lot of time and money."
-Bill Burnham, General Partner, Softbank Capital

"B2B startups need a 'game-over strategy' from the get-go. The big players have all woken up."
-Jonathan Callaghan, General Partner, CMGI's @Ventures

"We assume on funding or launching a startup that there are 4 or 5 others planning
the same thing. So our model is speed."
-Jake Weinbaum, Co-Founder, eCompanies (an incubator),
and General Partner, eCompanies Venture Fund

"We're seeing a shift from the policies and procedures of the Fortune 500 --
to the Silicon Valley playbook. A definite shift from 'command & control'."
-Keith Krach, Co-Founder and CEO, Ariba

"Where does a company start? Well, don't listen to your IT people when they say they can
do it in-house. They're not up to the task. And you'll need a $10 -million war chest, at least."
-Peter Jackson, CEO, Intraware

"We're still very early in B2B. How you partner is a critical part of your business model."
-Jonathan Strause, Managing Director, Internet Capital Group's new "eColony" incubator

"The VCs are moving to later-stage investments, so there's a growing gap. The opportunity
for incubators is huge."
-Jonathan Callaghan, General Partner, CMGI's @Ventures

"To build the team, it's important to be fluid, to recruit above the early team.
It's a culture thing--more important than anything."
-Ken Pelowski, COO/CFO, GetThere.com (a business travel site)

"The whole world now revolves around people and speed."
-Greg Peters, CEO, Vignette (whose company has gone from 100 to 1200 people in a year and a half)

"Our phone's been ringing off the hook with other companies wanting to learn about our new
'VIP Program,' which lets all our employees share in the upside of our $50-million venture fund."
-Greg Peters, CEO, Vignette

"Intellectual property is not as important today for startups. Worry about how to *execute*!"
-Jeff Levy, formerly CEO of Relevant Knowledge, now founder/CEO, eHatchery (an incubator)

"We're very reserved about the B2C sector -- the potential is still small. The catalog business
is only 2% of retail, and has stayed that way a long time. The reason is distribution costs and
difficulties. Nothing about the 'Net changes that."
-Fred Smith, Founder & CEO, Federal Express

"We covered all the bases before we launched--including equity buy-in from the major suppliers,
plus endorsement from a key industry association."
-Rod Heller, CEO, FoodUSA.com (a spot-market exchange,
or 'Net market maker, for beef, pork, and poultry)

"The tech model/business model is critical -- but geography is, too. If you don't have
someone in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, get them there."
-David Roddy, VP/Internet Economics, Tradeum

"Anyone who can deliver concrete and cement will make money. We're building the interstate system."
-David Roddy, VP/Internet Economics, Tradeum

"We're just starting the e-business transformation -- Andy Grove says only 5% of the required
servers have been deployed! But it won't happen without trust. The 'Net doesn't have hundreds
of years of tradition. Luckily, we do have better tools."
-Stratton Sclavos, CEO, VeriSign

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That's just a taste, friends, of the many pearls of wisdom that rained down on the assembled throng over the two+ days,
like endless rays of hot Florida sun. Stay tuned for more! Including my take on several other aspects of this great event:
- What's hot in B2B startup-land
- Coolest new company names I noted
- News heard while schmoozing & cocktailing
- Conference review (the good, bad, ugly)
- Interesting people I met and talked with
- Most notable no-show
- Whom I noted in attendance from my hometown
- Questions I fired at some key speakers
- My votes for best speakers/panelists
- And (of course!) party, beach, and fishing reports....

This very well conducted event covered a lot of ground in barely 10-12 hours of actual conference
sessions...looking at trends, technology issues, startup and funding issues, people and culture
issues, and lots more. But I wrote fast, grabbing as much as one guy reasonably could, with the
objective of netting it all out for you....a valuable summary of the event...and giving you a
snapshot of what it felt like to be there, as well some profiles of the interesting people I
always seem to meet at these things.

The sessions I took in over the two days covered such topics as:
- The New "Keiretsus": B2B Internetworking
- Exchanges Expanding Beyond Spot Markets
- Inside the B2B Venture Lifecycle
- Evolution of Digital Markets: Key Forces Transforming the Landscape
- Enabling the Marketplace: Are Today's Technologies Up to the Task?
- Dynamic Pricing: The Next Generation
- A B2B Forecast from the Buy Side
- The Future of B2B from the Investor/Analyst Viewpoint

That's it for now, but please do stay tuned for a whole lot more B2B buzz from Boca....

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your faithful conference reporter,
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Graeme Thickins, Founder & Principal Consultant
GT&A Strategic Marketing Inc.
*Twin Cities *LA *San Francisco *Seattle
Voice: 612/944-1672
Fax: 612/944-1673
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