An Inc. writer sets out to launch a business on the Internet.
Like you, we just knew there was gold to be found on the information superhighway -- so we sent a techno-savvy writer out to launch a business on the Internet and prove it. Here, expletives deleted, is her report
When Inc. magazine decided to break new ground and publish the one-trillionth story ever written about the information superhighway, I volunteered to start a business on the Internet and chronicle the experience for our readers. It was a beautiful moment in the history of selling story ideas: our fortunate readers would get an exhaustive explication of how to make a bundle on the Internet, and I would get the bundle.
Who, after all, hasn't heard about awesome opportunities on the Internet? We all could be making money and friends around the world via the global computer network, which nobody owns, which the government subsidizes, and where almost anybody with a modem, a PC, and a couple of bucks can bum a ride. What only a decade ago was an enclave of a few thousand junior professors, Department of Defense dweebs, and assorted other techno-weenies is now a worldwide colony of some 20 million users. A giddy press reports that even grandmothers are on the Net. Nearly 100,000 new users are logging on each month. And despite psychotic protests from the weenies, the Net is going commercial. Virtual entrepreneurs are racing to sell, advertise, and distribute products and services in cyberspace. The gold rush is on. Under the guise of my Inc. assignment, I too would stake my claim. I'd be an electronic mogul before the story ever saw print, I figured. Sometimes, I thought, you just get lucky.
* * *
Be Prepared
Who knew what business opportunities awaited on the electronic frontier: perhaps I'd break into publishing? Software? Entertainment? Through the Internet itself I'd research markets (all those databases!), locate partners or raise a little capital (the marvels of electronic mail!), and win customers (millions -- only keystrokes away!). Like most wanna-bes, I lacked only the right idea. Cruising the Net was sure to produce it.
A bootstrap operation, my venture would be held together with a phone line, a modem, a 486 PC, and an account with a local gateway provider, which would connect me to the Internet whenever I dialed. Financing it all on a travel-and-entertainment budget meant I'd brave the raw Internet, not one of the commercial on-line services, like America Online (AOL) and CompuServe, which offer only limited access to the available data lode and sell the best information à la carte. The Internet, by contrast, serves an all-you-can-eat buffet. Without the niceties of an interface, it was bound to be an ugly but cheap date. Still, how hard could it be? I'd buy a book or two and follow my instincts. I was no phobe, no clueless newbie: I had mastered flirting in the chat rooms on AOL, run my biorhythm chart on CompuServe, and even attended a "Drivers' Training for the Internet" seminar. I signed up for a volume-user account with Software Tool & Die, in Brookline, Mass. -- 20 hours a month for 20 bucks -- and prepared for my launch as an internaut. It would be a virtual cakewalk.
* * *
Day One: The Launch
It takes four attempts and nearly 20 minutes just to log on. OK, I scrolled a little quickly through the directions and made up a password instead of using the one assigned. Must we be slaves to the rules? The prompt, to which I direct my commands and queries, doesn't answer. The recalcitrant prompt rarely answers, because the Internet, it turns out, does not speak English. It speaks a babel of computer languages, and where I dial from, the mother tongue is UNIX, an operating system with a syntax that makes DOS seem as simple as pig latin.
I refuse, however, to be intimidated. I thumb again through The Instant Internet Guide, The Internet Companion , and Internet Instant Reference for a few choice phrases in UNIX. I type h-e-l-p to the on-line guides. But there's entirely too much "help." Maybe I should read one of the countless FAQs (lists of frequently asked questions)? I type h-e-l-p e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. That is not a valid request.
* * *
The Hydrant: How Do You Turn It Off?
Two days later, having dutifully read up on "help," I'm ready to peruse the electronic klatches known as newsgroups. I have plastered my terminal with a necklace of pink and yellow Post-it notes -- hastily scrawled UNIX commands to remind me how to remove, kill, stop stuff. I spend most of my time removing, killing, stopping stuff. In the infoblizzard that is the Internet, knowing how to make an emergency exit from any program at any time is essential.
I set out to cruise newsgroups such as misc.entrepreneurs, where I hope to find like-minded pioneers discussing the hottest business ideas of the day. I start a program called rn (for read news) and am invited to subscribe to alt.barney.die.die.die. I type, politely, n. But the invitations don't stop. In the oppressive inclusivity of the Internet, I am asked if I wish to join each of more than 3,500 newsgroups that cover topics from Star Trek to deviant sex. After declining 500 or so, I am ready to beat my head on the n key. There must be a simpler way. I look up a nifty trick to short-circuit the process. Two and a half hours later, my timesaving technique leaves me frozen in an editing program that dates from the Paleolithic era. I am desperate to escape. I try ^C, ^Q, ^Z, ^GET ME OUTTA HERE. I try ^KILLKILLKILL. Then I turn the machine off.
