Surviving the Dot-Com Bust

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 23rd, 2022

Surviving the Dot-Com Bust

We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for May 23rd, 2022.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on May 23rd included Dan McDonald, Dan Cross, Joshua Clulow, Steve Tuck, Matt Campbell and Theo Schlossnagle. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• @1:37 Pick and shovels story circulating at Sun
  • Oakes Ames "King of Spades", pbs article, wiki
  • boo.com wiki
  • pets.com wiki
• @11:00 IPOs and public exposure
  • theGlobe.com wiki
• @18:20 "The Correction"
  • Feasting like 19th century robber barons
  • Nov 2000, free fall
  • Trilogy, Inc wiki
• @28:49 Students looking for placement
  • Clarity of the bust
• @36:35 Billboards on the 101
  • garden.com, cnn blurb
• @39:13 Theo's story, roulette at Trilogy
• Expansion and contraction of CS student enrollment
• @46:20 Matt's memories
  • AllAdvantage wiki
  • Excite@Home wiki
• John Talbott "The Fall of Silicon Graphics" article
• Fucked Company wiki
• Camaraderie over watching your companies imploding
• @53:39 Looking towards the looming housing bubble
  • During Oxide raise, race against time for VC funding
• Pandemic
  • Hot venture environment, over-valued companies
  • Stimulus, spending on non-essentials, exacerbating income inequality
• @58:56 Differences from the dot-com era, more defined revenue models?
  • Food delivery services, harbingers of bust?
  • Steve anecdote: Dellionaires, margin call day, layoffs
• @1:08:12 Dan's second startup experience
  • Windows on the World wiki
• @1:10:15 Matt's question: can Oxide weather a tech bust?
  • Adam: downturn can motivate seeking value, looking away from (stable, pricey) incumbents to (riskier, cheaper) new offerings
  • Bryan: dot com bust pushed us toward open-source, for economic reasons.
• @1:15:51 Are we headed for a bust? How deep?
  • How does a company survive the lean times?
  • Negative human consequences
  • mammon (money, material wealth) wiki
  • Advice for practitioners?
• Dan McDonald: controlling inflation, starting companies
• Theo: downturn will hit industries differently, concerns over global supply chain
• Adam: don't forget about helping others, looking out for other people, for the future of our world.
• Dan Cross: if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!