I think, the other thing is, especially in a service in the Internet industry, your customer service has to be top of the line. Customers have lots of choices and while the market is a global market for any company that’s in the Internet space, what that ultimately means is the opportunity is here, but there is also lots of opportunity for the buyer to move elsewhere.
So, I think help them grow, improve, and profit – and customer service is absolutely key – and go where the money is at. People say what’s your strategy, I’ll tell you what, I’m very pragmatic.
I look at our core competencies, whether it is electronic commerce, whether it is Web hosting, whether it is software development, Web programming, or distance learning, something else that we do, and I look at the numbers every day. And of course, I look at the multiples and the valuations in these areas, especially, with the publicly traded companies, but go where the money is.
In other words, where you see the growth in your company, then that’s where you need to reinforce success. And where you see stuff starting to wane, then you have to cut that off, you have to let it go.
Sometimes it’s hard to do, especially if you get locked into a `Here is my vision, here is my strategy, and by God, I’m not changing it.` I think, what do they say, gullibly(?) and into the wire they go, over and over and over like lemming. I’ll give you one example, just a couple of years ago, there was a dedicated server push in our industry where everybody was selling dedicated servers.
It all sounded good at the beginning, but what happened, what a lot of companies have found is that your cost of goods is very high and the problem with selling dedicated services is most of the hardware you put online for customers these days is obsolete within 12 months. But these companies ultimately end up leasing or financing this equipment for what the tax value is, they can do it for 24 to 36 months.
What happens when you have an obsolete piece of equipment that you only got 12 months of revenue out of, but your finance terms are 36 months long? But the companies all followed each other over the cliff, like lemmings, and the analysts have also said, ‘yes, that’s the way to go,’ and we looked at it and said ‘you know what, we’ll hedge your bets, but we don’t think that’s a way to go` and sure enough now, lot of the companies in our space that pursue that strategy and some today continue to pursue that strategy, are also looking around and finding out that they are in a negative cash flow situation or they try to dump the assets on the market. That was a mouthful.