Frontlineiposeries Quotes.Doc

Quotes from the interview transcripts for the Frontline documentary Dot Con:

Brian NeSmith (CEO of Cacheflow) on how standards changed during the bubble:

‘going public at that time was almost the same as raising a first or second round venture capital. I haven’t proven that we can be profitable, I haven’t proven that I can really grow the revenue, I don’t have all the management team, the product may even still have some technology issues that we need to validate.”

Brian NeSmith (CEO of Cacheflow) on what his firm wanted to get from the IPO:

“in the end, what Cacheflow wanted to get out of the IPO was a half dozen institutional investors that believe – believe in what you’re doing, believe in the company, believe in the management team, and are not only going to be purchasers at the IPO but are going to be long term accumulators of the stock”

Michael Barach (CEO of MotherNature.com) on allocations in IPOs with a high first day pop:

“taking someone out to lunch and paying for their meal - that’s OK - but if you gave me a yacht, that would probably not be OK”

Michael Barach (CEO of MotherNature.com) on a subscriber model (“lifetime customer value”):

“In a direct marketing business, which is what a B to C company is, the only metric that works here is what’s called lifetime customer value. For the average customer you get, what do they spend the first time? What percent come back and buy? What do they spend the second time? What does it cost to service each of those customers?”

Lise Buyer (former analyst) paraphrasing Graham and Dodd (a classic book on investing), and discussing the difficulties of recommending stocks during a bubble:

“there are periods of time when there are new technologies and new fields of endeavor where an analyst basically serves his or her discipline best by pointing out those companies that seem to have the momentum. And the analyst's job at that point is to mention, to make sure that investors understand that, while...