Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the November 6, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
The New Internet: Slow But Steady
d>Edwin Goodman, a founder of Milestone Venture
Partners, speaks on “After the Fall: The New VC Landscape,”
at a meeting of the Venture Association of New Jersey on Tuesday,
November 12, at 11:30 at the Westin hotel in Morristown. Cost: $50.
Goodman and his partner, Richard Dumier founded Milestone in
1999, but Goodman, a graduate of Yale (Class of 1962) has been
involved
in the venture capital arena for 26 years. While he was with Patricof
& Co. he managed the fund that invested in Apple Computer in the
summer
of 1977.
Holdings in Milestone’s funds now include a number of young companies
using technology in innovative ways. Among the companies are CarParts,
which provides supply chain management to manufacturers, warehouse
distributors, jobbers, and installers, and BizBash.com, a media
company
with an interesting, gossip-filled website, which targets the business
event and business entertainment market.
Other portfolio companies include Plusfunds, an electronic marketplace
for the hedge fund industry; Knovel, which provides online technical
information to the engineering and applied science community; and
Cosential, a managed application service provider for the
architecture,
engineering, and construction industries.
In a recent newsletter, Goodman quotes Andrew McAfee of Harvard
Business
School saying that “we’ll never see again a wave of enthusiasm
and investment and speculation that rises and crashes the way the
first Internet wave did. But we are in for a slow steady progression
and a deepening of these technologies.”
In the newsletter, Goodman goes on to tick off the challenges facing
entrepreneurs — and why he thinks they will beat them. Here is
an excerpt:
The last few months have brought more numerous and moreappallingdistractions, including additional tragedies in the Middle East andthe odious and mounting pile of evidence of genocide in the Balkansat the hands of Mr. Milosevic and his cohorts.Closer to home, in a professional sense, the sleazeratti have emergedon the business scene. These individuals, through their malfeasance,in the delicate phrasing of Chairman Greenspan, have mugged theAmericancapital markets along with many stakeholders. The market is punishingthese companies severely, although it remains to be seen to whatdegreethe key perpetrators will suffer.Politicians on both sides of the aisle are aggressively movingpunitivelegislation forward while trying, at the same time, to avoid killingthe golden business goose. The only thing we can be certain of isthat those supportive of business and market solutions and those whowould rely on government intervention to cure the excesses of marketcapitalism will both emerge from this melee unhappy. However, I amreasonably optimistic that the pull and tug of our system with itsmany disparate power centers won’t fundamentally harm the economyand, on the margins, may help to restore confidence.The basic U.S. economic engine continued to chug along at an amazingpace, particularly in the light of the September, 2001, horrors,compoundedby the self-inflicted wounds caused by some of ourethically-challengedcorporate leaders.I think there are four factors of which three will recede inimportanceover the coming months. First, we are still experiencing a retreatin pricing from historic high and unsustainable levels that peakedin March of 2000. Second, the corporate felons have wreaked havocby undermining confidence in the markets, which has been exacerbatedby media sharks with talk of systemic structural problems. Third,despite the improving macroeconomy, a number of highly visiblecompanieshave failed to meet their operating objectives for the year-to-date.The fourth “wild card issue” is the birth of preemptive strikeforeign policy and its possible implementation against Iraq. Puttingaside the question of the folly or wisdom of such a move, marketslike certainty and the specter of war is hugely destabilizing.But Milestone’s business is good. Deploying capital in troubled timesin capital-scarce markets has always bred opportunity. We areencounteringmany energetic entrepreneurs who focus on the task at hand in theirrespective micro-markets and don’t do too much hand wringing aboutmacro conditions and the state of the world.Previous StoryNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
