I went to a presentation a while back where Ronnie Apteker, co-founder of Internet Solutions, was speaking about his early entrepreneurial exploits. He and a friend had established a stall at the Rosebank Rooftop Market to sell airbrushing kits. On a particularly slow day, a woman walked over to them, and inspected their wares. "Do these contain any CFCs?" she asked.
Apteker met her gaze, and said to her: "Madam, I assure you that this product contains more CFCs than any other on the market."
At a time when the industry is still muttering direly about the bursting of the dot-com bubble, it`s success stories like Apteker`s that remind us of the bigger picture.
Georgina Guedes, Journalist, ITWeb
Fortunately, his later activities centred on the birth of the Internet, a field he actually knew something about, and by the time the rest of SA cottoned on, Apteker had pretty much cornered the country`s ISP market. His sale of the company to Dimension Data in 1996 meant that he never needed to work again, but he continues to dabble in all things technical, and a few other things besides.
At a time when the industry is still muttering direly about the bursting of the dot-com bubble, it`s success stories like Apteker`s that remind us of the bigger picture.
Every industry revolution in history has followed a similar boom and bust model. In 1850, hundreds of railroad companies had been formed, demanding money from investors, touting the forecast successes of the railways as the irrefutable rationale backing their demands. Thirty years later, very few of those companies still exist.
Boom times
An industrial boom is a process that separates the wheat from the chaff. When a new idea is formed, thousands of little companies mushroom up around the concept. While some of these companies see an original application in a flooded market, others are merely replicating the services offered by thousands of others. The truly original ideas stay afloat, the rest go under.
We are sitting at the brink of the new era of the Internet. There are those companies that have survived the crash, and are now weathering the meandering information superhighway with the confidence that their services are actually required. Beyond that, there are new concepts that are cropping up as the successful Internet breeds its own requirements.
Forbes this week released its list of the Richest People in America, and all the old names are still there. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Michael Dell stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the non-tech Walmart heirs. Interestingly enough, when Forbes released its 40 richest under 40 last month, the ratio of technology to non-tech billionaires was the same.
And another word of hope to those still hoping to ride the Internet tiger is that despite a difficult stock market, the overall wealth of the 400 richest Americans rose 10% to $995 billion this year, while last year saw a decline of $80 billion. All of this renews my faith in technology, and its ability to turn good ideas into solid cash.
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