Date: April 28, 2000

**************************************************
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
**************************************************

(to subscribe to our list of New Economy execs--now 2000+ strong!--and receive future conference reports, click here and give us your contact info)

Dear Clients, Partners, Friends, and B2BuzzHounds:

It was a gathering of B2B visionaries, pundits, practitioners, hypsters, and hipsters like never before. The ultimate Internet Business-to-Business Lovefest, somehow presciently timed right at the very peak of the recent B2B mania. Remember that? Ah, yes, the good old days -- four weeks ago. When our portfolios were a-buzzin' like never before....

What follows are some final observations, insights, and perspectives from an eye-witness to this high-brow networking and learning event. So, for those of you B2B faithful who still believe, read on...and I hope you enjoy it. (For those who don't? Well, there's always those *old* economy stocks to go back to.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ten Forces That Will Dominate the B2B Marketplace"
(and guide the evolution of it)

- as presented by David Roddy, VP Internet Economics, Tradeum

1) Digital marketplaces will happen in every industry...offering average savings of 8-10%.

2) Both the technology model and business model will be critical...and geography will be, too. ("If you don't have someone in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, get them there.")

3) Internet coopetition will be everywhere...."internetworking."

4) Companies will share the wealth they help create....the Global 2000 will sell liquidity for a stake in the B2B Internet Economy. ("CFOs will buy their way into the new digital marketplaces.")

5) Bandwidth abundance will drive rapid adoption of B2B markets...."it's the convergence of the four laws: Moore's, Metcalf's, Gilder's, and Say's (the latter being supply creates its own demand....as in "build it and they will come")

6) A variety of digital market types will transform the networked economy: catalogs, auctions, RFP/RFQ systems, managed-bid systems, spot exchanges, etc....the challenge: make the choice of types transparent to the user. ("Anyone who can deliver concrete and cement will make money--we're building the Interstate System.")

7) "Parameters" and "parties" will be critical steps in the migration path of digital markets...parameters like price, availability, and quality, and third parties in the areas of product, transportation, finance, insurance. ("Just as in the real world.")

8) Digital market evolution is complicated, but could happen quickly... "islands" are being interconnected, standards are coming about, big companies are grouping many verticals into single horizontals. ("We're heading to ubiquity, and the take-up could be rapid--like online trading was.")

9) Speculation will increase transaction volume and offer benefits to the customer. "Already, the same barrel of oil is sold 5 times! We'll be buying and selling for future delivery. There'll be arbitrage across markets...and options, derivatives, insurance." ("In fact, here are my business models for the day: an 'ArbitrageBot' and a 'MarketMaker for MarketMakers,' the latter selling liquidity for a fee.")

10) The high value of digital market *information* will become obvious. (See book by Varian, "Information Rules," Roddy said. "The value of the information to the outside world will be very high, yet we'll still need to protect privacy and anonymity.")

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

A little break here. This wasn't said at iB2B -- rather, in the wake of it -- but here's an insight I grabbed off the web that I thought highly worthy of inclusion in this report...

It's from Kevin Jones, CEO of NetMarketMakers, in a comment posted April 2nd on his firm's "FatButterfly" B2B discussion list, on the topic "Are B2B opportunities closing?":

"The new hints of a posssible chill in the investment attitude, coupled with the fact that big guys are learning to play, are both factors that raise risk for entrepreneurs. It doesn't close the door, but it raises a couple of steps needed to cross over to get through the door. The party is not over, but you have to be more serious to get on the dance floor. That's a good thing, as Martha would say."

(c) 2000 NetMarketMakers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some further thoughts and snipits from the iB2B conference....

Anything to Do With Food Was Big:
(some presenters or attendees)

-FoodUSA.com (Wisconsin's own! a meat 'Net market)
-PoultryFirst.com
-WorldCatch.com (an e-fish market, Seattle based)
-eFoodManager.com
-GlobalFoodExchange.com
-TheSauce.com (a restaurant metamediary)

Work & Recruiting Was Big:
(more presenters or attendees)

-eWork.com
-Works.com
-eSolo.com
-Office.com
-MyWorkTools.com
-Services.com (Evolve)
-PeopleScape.com
-FutureStep.com
(and yet-to-be-launched Business.com
was also present, though in a subtle way)

People I Noted in Attendance from My Co-Home Base (the Twin Cities):

-Todd Peterson, CEO, LabSeek.com
-Dan Trauscht, IT Manager, 3M
-Brett Heffes, VP-Corp Dev, Dept. 56
-and two investment bankers from Dain Rauscher and Piper Jaffray in the
Twin Cities, now both transplanted to Silicon Valley (not the only ones
to have made that jump)
-and another former Twin Citian, Bill Burnham -- the ever-present pundit,
and certainly one of the smartest of the bunch -- who began as a tech
analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, now a VC at Softbank in Silicon
Valley

Cool Company Names I First Heard at iB2B:

-BlueDingo.com
-Submarino.com
-eSolo.com
-Good2CU.com
-Profifics.com
-LavaStorm.com
-RocketBay.com
-Authoria.com
-Mercantil.com
-Perfect.com
-ClixnMortar.com
-And the closest-two-names award goes to:
   -Simplexity.com
   -Simplexis.com
-Followed of course by our perrenial-longest-name award,
 which goes to our big-buck, wonderful friends in Chicago:
   -DivineInterventures.com (who luckily own
    the shorter form as well: Divine.com)

------------------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of startups, the other day I heard about the coolest new way for a new 'Net firm to score $500,000 -- actually, not the cash, but the equivalent in personalization technology software & services (just as good). It's a contest, open to all--and the best idea wins. My friend Steve Larsen, senior VP of somethin' or other at Twin Cities powerhouse Net Perceptions, told me about it. NETP's actually co-sponsoring it with web services firm Wheelhouse. The deadline's May 17. Read about it here ....Now, back to our regularly scheduled program....

------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting People I Met and Chatted With:

-Kelly Conlin, the CEO of IDG, parent of The Industry Standard (a very nice guy from North Dakota, with relatives in the Twin Cities)
-Narry Singh, the well spoken partner of The McKenna Group (who let us know at the event that he'd just decided to go off on his own)
-Bill Goff, EVP of CNA (a big traditional-company guy, who made a ton of money for his employer in Internet plays--and luckily cashed them out of most when the gettin' was good...$500M worth...now starting his own startup advisory/angel firm)
-Riley McDonough, former publisher of Inc. Magazine, now SVP of Corp Dev for iPing.com in NYC
-Jake Winebaum, co-founder of eCompanies, whom I chatted with again after meeting him at the last Industry Standard conference in Aspen, and he spoke on at least two panels
-Maryjo Bos, eCompanies' well regarded senior recruiter, whose team has been responsible for staffing some 10 startups this new incubator/VC fund has already launched
-Rob Vickery, VP of Bus Dev and Co-Founder of a then-secretive eCompanies startup in San Diego....since let outta the bag: Change.com...one of the incubator's first B2B plays
(which reminds me: the Biggest No-Show Award of the event goes to...ta, dah!...my buddy Jim Moriarty, CEO of Change.com...who registered but, of course, was too damn busy getting ready for launch...and, besides, the waves are way better at his home break near San Diego)
-And many, many more, really interesting people....hey, I ended up with 24.2% more business cards than my last Industry Standard conference (in Aspen, and that was killer!)...

And Now for a Review of the Conference:

One complaint I had, and heard from others, is that the event didn't have enough entrepeneurs presenting -- that is, those "who'd done it" in B2B. More guys like Rod Heller of Madison, Wisconsin's FoodUSA.com. (Sure, some really big company CEOs presented, like VerticalNet, but those stories we've all read about ad infinitum). Unfortunately, there were far too many pundits, VCs, analysts, and others who -- despite their gift for brilliant repartee --just don't live on the front lines.

We needed more cowboy entrepreneurs! For example, a guy like Rusty Braziel of Altra Energy, whose 'Net marketplace now handles some 40% of the U.S. natural gas spot market. He would have been a big hit.

But listen to one of the attendees. What follows is an unsolicited appraisal I got of the event -- an email that came in response to my second iB2B report, from a "major movie studio executive." (He graciously agreed to let me share his opinions with my list, but preferred his name not be used.)

So, some thoughts on the event -- straight from the heart and unedited, from a guy with long experience in the entertainment business (which provides another answer to that nagging question, "Which industry will NOT be getting into Internet B2B?"):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"I was struck at iB2B at how very different this conference was from the ones I had attended at the dawn of other new industries - home video in 1980 (CES, VSDA), cable programming/pay TV in 1982 (NAB, NCTA, NATPE). At those conferences the discussions and networking all revolved around building businesses, marketing to the consumer, creating an industry and building value.

"Well over half of all the conversations at iB2B, and at least half of the comments made by speakers were about making a killing in the stock market. Even the many 'speed' comments had less to do with business imperative, than with the need to get to market in order to IPO before a competitor launched or the industry players 'took it back.' Frankly, I was astonished. Not one person had a single thought or idea about my industry - and I came begging for ideas. All I got was an endless stream of cyber-babble - 'You have to break your model.' ... 'Start by killing all the executives.' ... 'If you're not there already, you're dead.' ...blah blah blah... Frankly, I was bored and underwhelmed by the almost total lack of business acumen or thoughtful insight. All anyone wanted to talk about was the market cap of VerticalNet or some other startup. No one seemed intrigued by the GM announcement or the essential death of AOL Moviephone (both the result of 'bricks and mortar' moving into B2B territory).

"If I suggested a flaw in someone's business plan - for example that AOL Moviephone was about to be put out of business by the theater owners (after all, Amazon.com doesn't OWN the books) - all I got was a stream of data on this one's net worth or that one's net worth, as if winning the lottery had made them experts on advanced nonlinear numbers theory. No, you won the lottery -- there's a difference. Those of us not in the lottery business, the ones needing the advice and expertise I vainly sought, found the conference a crashing excercise in self-indulgence, self-congratulation, banal blather, empty platitudes, meaningless and (to me) irrelevant market cap data, and no original ideas.

"VerticalNet is a brilliant company and will kill trade publishing - but trade publishing is trade publishing and does not enjoy 50% profit margins, so the financial models are a joke. Talk to me about B2B auctions - a 5%/10% business - Sotheby's and Christy's have shown in abundant measure that, in the face of competition, auction commissions can and will be driven to 0%, and only illegal price fixing restored them to 15%. Having said that, these are good businesses and supplanting a bricks and mortar incumbent with the electronic newcomer will work and will be a better business -- it just won't have the market value of the State of Brunei. I bought a bunch of the stocks recently as they were crashing. Mark Walsh, by the way, is a veteran of the birth of cable/HBO and does seem to know the difference between a business plan and a winning lottery ticket -- he just happens to have both.

"Before I go to another one of these boring, dot-Commie, group-think industrial re-education camps, I may just shoot myself."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings to The Industry Standard folks...but, I guess some people fill out the eval forms, and some unload by email! I trust they'll take note of this as they plan future events. (There are a more than a few Industry Standard people on this list.)

Nonetheless, as a veteran of many executive Internet events, overall I think the program was reasonably good -- despite the mix of speakers and panelists not being quite right, some logistics problems, too many good sessions held concurrently, a bad session or two (CRM was simply awful), and the cancellation of the closing speaker (naughty, naughty! it's not nice to short the folks). The networking -- after all, what a lot of the people really come for -- was killer (if you're into working a crowd of 800+, that is). The parties and activities, too, were quite good, and the venue arguably an impressive one. In the vote at the end, however, the location that attendees chose as most preferred for next year's return engagement was San Diego, which I was sure glad to see (and hooped n' hollered accordingly!) -- I'll take California over Florida *any day*.

And the Partyin', You Ask?

Oh, the partyin'... Wednesday night's opening reception in the courtyard was great, where I caught up with many old friends. Including Rob McEwen, CEO of Austin, Texas, interactive agency powerhouse M2K, and another transplant from Down Under, like me (in his case, a Kiwi--but I forgive him that)...and Cheryl Lucanegro, a power broker in her own right, as VP/Assoc Publisher at The Standard.

Thursday night's "Evening in Havana" gala was mucho fun....mui authentico, as they say....around the Boca Beach Club's ocean-front pool. The highlight: hand-rolled cigars for all! (The idea was to glorify the Havana of old, I guess...because this sure as hell wasn't a group of Castro sympathizers--know what I mean?)

But the real nightlife began soon after, in the Presidential Suite atop the Boca Resort's waterside tower -- with martinis, cigars, and schmoozin' till the early hours. And it was fun to watch some serious poker-playing, too -- with The Standard's CEO, John Battelle, leading the way (quite the cowboy he is, too, befitting a wildly successful entrepreneur -- now finally taking a moment to relax and have fun). Which the rest of us certainly did as well -- a lot of business was discussed and friendships forged in that mobbed room. After a great cigar, I had to cut it short to hit the hay. Couldn't miss my 6:00 a.m. wakeup bell to (what else?) check email -- but I also had a fishing date.

The Fishing Report: It Was a Flush (In More Ways than One)

The Standard was nice enough to plan some great activities for us iB2Bers on Saturday, after we'd exercised our brains and note-taking hands so hard for two solid days. I chose, along with 40 some others, to sign up for what was termed "Marlin Fishing." So, a flotilla of a half dozen well-equipped and crewed 40-footers headed out from the Boca Resort at 8:00 am for an all-morning cruise -- determined to land...the big ones?

Ha! -- not a single Marlin wasn't seen or heard from that I know of. But our boat was lucky enough to land four nice small fish (22" to 24" in length). We got a Dolphin (the MahiMahi kind--not Flipper), a Barracuda, a Kingfish, and a Bonita. The captain noted our varied catch as we departed....and yelled, "Hey, know whatcha got there? You got yer 'Pompano Flush'!"

Fitting, since there was a major amount of flushing of another type that had gone on in the head a good part of the trip. I managed to keep my breakfast down, but some of the others weren't so lucky. This ocean fishing, gang, is tough when you aren't used to it -- bobbing about incessantly in big waves. (And, hell, I love waves -- when I ride 'em in another fashion, closer to shore.) You see, it's really windy off the Florida coast most of the time (the "Pacific" it ain't), and it takes a while to get those "sea legs," we learned.

I got mine an hour or so into the trip, after making conversation with the crew guy who was handling the rigging and baiting. Found out he was a fellow surfer, so we talked about the waves and surf spots along the Florida coast, and how their local surf shop guy, whom I remember talking to several years ago (I took a surf trip to Florida once), got into IRS problems and took off for Australia! (Where he's no doubt in surfing nirvana right now.)

Also had some very nice chats with my fishing mates during the four hours of bobbing about: Joe Walowski, VP of Development for The Industry Standard (who's heavy into international expansion and told me some intersting news: the first non-U.S. print version of The Standard is soon to be launched in Australia -- yeah!)...Laurie Malen, whom I knew from a previous conference, when she was with Excite @Home (she's now VP Bus Dev with MediaSite)... and Steve Sponder, CEO of BizProLink.com, based right there in Boca (and, thus, the most experienced fisherman in our foursome).

So, What's the One Takeaway, He Asked Intently?

I close with a final insight from my-man Pat, our fishing boat co-captain... a wise, old Italian guy who's a self-made entrepreneur in his own right, having transplanted his business from New York to Boca 12 years ago (and who also helps his buddy with fishing charters for a little extra scratch on the side). His upholstery business serves a clientele he very purposely courted: interior designers and discrimating homeowners who won't settle for anything but the best. Basking in the sun on the deck of this gleaming white fishing boat, plying the deep blue waters off Boca, he told me his cardinal rule of business: "You don't want the ones who ask 'How much?', he said. "You want the ones who ask 'When?'"

Ah, yes, Pat -- something those who would be successful on the Internet and in B2B need no reminder of. Let's hear it for the currency of the New Economy:   s-p-e-e-d !!

flat-out, balls-to-the-wall, I remain...
your dedicated conference servant,
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Graeme Thickins, Founder & Principal Consultant
GT&A Strategic Marketing Inc.
*Twin Cities *LA *San Francisco *Anywhere
Voice: 612/944-1672
Fax: 612/944-1673
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
And Editor-in-Chief:
"Branding & Marketing to Win
in the Knowledge Economy(tm)"
http://www.gtamarketing.com
...A Unique Resource for CEOs...'Net Startup Founders...
VCs and Analysts...Marketing & Business Development
Executives...and Other Shapers of the New Economy...

(a web site and email list of Internet & new media
executives now 2000+ strong and growing!)