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To download the Introduction in pdf, click here.

The 20 Net Ventures

The 20 promising Net ventures profiled in this book are diverse. While many Internet startups go belly up and success in the space is by no means guaranteed, the women entrepreneurs who started these companies all share a mix of courage, boldness, smarts, good timing, optimism, and some luck that was instrumental in achieving their successes. Six of the companies fall into the web portal, content, and community category; four into the web-based services category; six are e-commerce firms; and four are web technology companies. Six of the 20 are business-to-business (B2B), ten are business-to-consumer (B2C), and four cross the boundary between the two categories.

The businesses are also varied in terms of the source of their funding, the level of their funding, and their stage. Reflecting the growth in women's access to capital resources and the fact that large capital infusions are usually a prerequisite for growing a major Net company, the majority of the profiled companies are funded by venture capitalists (VCs) or angels (high net worth individuals who invest in startups). Desktop.com, EDGAR Online, NetCreations, CoVia, eCommerce Industries, and Marimba are examples of companies whose founders initially opted to bootstrap their businesses (biz speak for self-fund). The other companies had outside investments from an early stage. There's also a wide range in the level of investment these businesses received. Some received relatively small amounts of seed capital and were able to build their businesses from there. Others received larger investments, some in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

These profiles were written between January and June 2000, an especially voatile time for Internet stocks. The Nasdaq fell from a high of more than 5000 in March 2000 to under 3300 in May, dampening investor enthusiasm for Internet IPOs and making VCs more cautious than in preceding months. VCs even coined yet another new three-character Internet acronym, "P2P" for "path to profitability," reflecting their increased emphasis on ensuring that their portfolio companies move steadily and swiftly toward profitability. At that time six of the 20 ventures were post-IPO, one had been acquired, and another one merged with a competitor as as I was writing the book. Seven of the companies were at an early stage, having received seed, first, or second rounds of funding. The remaining ones were in later funding rounds. By the time you read this, however, some of the pre-IPO startups will likely have gone public or been merged or acquired.

Although the number of profiled companies is too small to be statistically meaningful, the geographical locations of the 20 companies' headquarters give an indication of where web companies are tending to cluster. Reflecting the Bay Area's dominance in the new economy, three of the companies are based in Silicon Valley, one is in the East Bay, and eight are in San Francisco's Media Gulch. But not all things cyber emanate from points west. Five of the companies are based on the east coast -- two in Connecticut and three in New York's Silicon Alley. One is in Virginia. Two overseas web ventures are also included -- one in Tokyo and the other in São Paulo.

Because the web economy operates on web time (just like dog time, seven web years equals a calendar year), the fate of the 20 profiled companies will be determined quickly. While I selected them because of their promising businesses, some will continue to obtain greater and greater market share while others will undoubtedly fall to the wayside as the web years fly by.

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The 20 Ventures and Their Women Founders
| The Introduction | The Proposal

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