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Do you want the New Economy or not?

By Ian Shoales

Many people seem to have a grasp on the New Economy. I'm not one of them. Even as I write, thousands of entrepreneurs are bundling bushels of stock options into their private jets. Although they aren't even 40 yet and nothing's really happened to them (besides making a pile of money), some are hiring ghostwriters to pen their autobiographies. But even for those of us addicted to books that reveal the secrets of success, I don't think My Life in a Cube: A Memoir really cuts it.

I've read dozens of magazine articles seeking to unravel the Silicon Valley mystique. The magazine writers usually turn in their 3,000 words, but fly back to New York baffled. After all, there is no Silicon Valley mystique. Silicon Valley is just an endless series of bland two-story office buildings, separated by parking lots. Sure, it has a Denny's and a mini-mall sushi joint, but they're usually five miles away from the office complexes. And most employees eat lunch in their cubes anyway. (Read My Lunch in a Cube: A Memoir for more complete details.)

Regarding the New Economy, I can't tell the forest from the trees, especially when every tree is a potential forest. The dot-com I just fled, for example, in existence for a mere five months, has already been absorbed by a larger dot-com. When trees are constantly merging, it's hard to get your bearings. As a matter of fact, the forest itself is starting to resemble a giant amoeba. Sure, it has traces of foliage here and there to make us think it's a forest, but it looks like an all-devouring blob to me. (And I urge you to check out William Gates' Blob in a Cube: Windows NT and the Future of America!)

Still, on the way to the world becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Time/Life/Warner/AOL/Disney/Amazon.com, there are flashes of the Old Economy here and there. I was just reading an article in The New Yorker about Kozmo.com Inc. ("How Kozmo is getting killed by its customers," Sept. 4, 2000). I've used it myself to order movies over the Internet and have them brought right to my door by an underpaid delivery person who didn't speak English. Cool!

Well, Kozmo, according to The New Yorker, "recently announced that it was canceling its plans to go public." Kozmo is one of many "companies that bring stuff from their warehouses to your door free." When it first started, Kozmo raised $250 million dollars in capital. That's gone now.

The problem? Apparently, Kozmo is suffering from an excess of success. According to The New Yorker, sure, "there are plenty of people in big cities who are happy to have ice cream, video games, and even DVD players delivered...." But there are also customers who will dial up Kozmo (or its equivalent) just to get a box of Raisinettes. In other words, according to The New Yorker, "Every time a customer places an order, Kozmo loses money. And the more customers it has, the more money it loses."

So Kozmo may have taken the customer-is-always-right stance right into the poorhouse. This Old Economy attitude is a widespread problem with the New Economy, as I see it. You can order pet food over the Internet! You can make your own price for vacations, plane tickets, and hotels! You can get a jellybean, an ice cube, and an M&M - just because you can! And the dot-coms, out of the kindness of their generous hearts, give it to us without charging a delivery fee and at a discount. They're Bob Cratchitt. And we're the greedy Scrooges. The world's turned upside down!

The New Yorker, although chiding Kozmo for its business model, was even more critical of the American consumer: We are (or Kozmo is treating us like) "pampered babies."

See what the Internet has done to us? Like newborns with attention deficit disorder, we move from site to site with our mouse fingers twitching like Wyatt Earp's at the O.K. Corral as we search for shareware, freeware, free games, and free downloads.

Obviously, our bad habits are going to destroy the New Economy before it's even halfway out of its virtual shell. We're going to have to shop responsibly! If you're going to order Raisinettes, order a case of them! Make it worth the deliveryperson's while! Instead of ordering one movie, order a dozen movies. Stay up all night watching them! Skip work!

Better yet, instead of ordering a movie, order a VCR, DVD, and new computer. Get a car, house, and European vacation at the full price. Don't haggle!

Best of all, become your own company. Then buy Kozmo and turn it into a scalable B2B marketing solution. I still don't know what that means exactly, but it seems to make the New Economy turn on a dime. If we could turn that dime into a dollar, well, we might just get somewhere. Out of the cube, anyway. That would do us all a lot of good.

Ian Shoales wants to put his money where his mouth is, but his mouth is too big and his money too small. He lives in San Francisco, where dot-coms drop like flies on a daily basis.