Tom Taulli

Last year, there were great hopes for Mothernature.com , an e-tailer of vitamins, supplements and other natural and healthy products. The company was part of the CMGI companies and in December, Mothernature.com went public. Unfortunately, since then, the stock has collapsed. It is now trading for 23/32. Let’s take a deeper look at Mothernature.com. There […]

In the past few months, it has been a nightmare for e-consulting companies. The problems? Well, there is intense competition; there is difficulty finding talented employees; and, of course, dot-com companies have been rapidly running out of money. As a result, the valuations of e-consulting companies have been thrashed. One of the hardest hit has […]

With the surge in new hardware technologies, there has been huge demand for semiconductors. In fact, there are big shortages, which is increasing prices across the board. A major beneficiary is Simple Technology. The company plans to go public in late September. The price range is $10-$12 and the company intends to issue 6.3 million […]

Before founding Portal Software in 1985, John Little had extensive experience with the communications industry. He consulted for such giants as AT&T, Knight Ridder and Raytheon. He understood that there would be a universal global network – that is, the Internet. At first, Portal Software was an Internet Service Provider (ISP). However, with the intense […]

With nearly every family in America having a TV in their living rooms, the concept of interactive TV has always seemed like a no-brainer. Yet, despite many efforts from mega media companies, nothing seems to work. But in the past few years, interactive TV has been gaining traction. One of the top providers is TiVo […]

In April 2000, the best-selling author, Stephen King, made online publishing history. He distributed his novella, Riding the Bullet, over the Net. Approximately 500,000 copies were sold. True, the Web and book publishing seems like a natural fit. After all, the Internet is a great medium for written content. However, there is a problem: Publishers […]

A cool idea and nifty PowerPoint presentation was enough to start a dot-com business. After all, the market potential was huge. So why not invest millions of dollars in advertising and grab as much market share as possible? The end result would be profits, right? Of course, the dot-com’s have deflated and the venture funding […]

In the mid 1980s, John Kilchullen was in a bookstore in New York. A customer was looking for a book on the DOS operating system and asked a clerk if there was a version for dummies. By 1990, he and three others decided to establish IDG Books . Of course, the first book was DOS […]

The Sabre airline reservation system was launched in 1960 on two IBM 7090 mainframes. It took 400 man-years and $40 million to develop it. In 1996, American Airlines spun-off the division, which now trades as Sabre Holdings . No question, Sabre is a powerhouse. For the first six months of 2000, the company processed 247 […]

Up until the early 1800s, the conventional wisdom was that protectionism was a wise policy. But the classical economist David Ricardo argued vigorously against it. He believed that free trade was the best approach and developed the concept of comparative advantage (that is, nations should specialize). While there has been great strides towards free trade, […]

“The human resources department has never been a priority,” says Doug Shurtleff, the CEO of Exult . Yet, if HR is not managed properly, it could result in disorganization, as well as lower profitability. Actually, HR is becoming increasingly complex. For example, there has been a surge in global M&A, the flattening of corporate organization, […]

I often get e-mail from frustrated readers who say something like, “I tried to get IPO shares, but got none,” or “I did get shares, but only 100.” Even wealthy individuals have a hard time getting IPOs. In a way, the IPO game is rigged for very big money; that is, institutions. In fact, the […]