It is all about the bottom line. When the going gets tough, the key to survival is cost control. Back in the hay day when .com’s where the rage, millions of VC was being handed out like free fliers at the front of a grocery store in Tianjin. It was as if temporary insanity had struck all, the investors and the investees. Especially the investors should have known better. They seemed to throw caution to the wind and start signing over wads of cash as if every geek in a garage was going to be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. It seemed for a time that guys everywhere were going from zero to hero overnight. All they needed was to find a greedy and gullible VC to back some pie in the sky idea. Then they were off buying a new hot ride and renting a contemporary office space complete with fuse ball tables and video games. All of sudden guys where showing up to the office in flips flops and a t-shirt instead of the long-standing tradition of neatly pressed white dress shirt and tie.

As with most bubbles that get too big, the .com bubble popped. When it did, some cried, some died. Sadly, huge sums of “paper” money went down the proverbial drain in an instant as stocks crashed after news of one .com after another announcing bankruptcy. It was a surreal time. Many were going from the highest high to the lowest low in a matter of moments. The truth be told, the writing had been on the wall all along. Why? No one can just spend money like water and get away with it forever. Sooner or later, everyone’s got to pay the piper. Bank notes come due, car payments, office rent, employee payroll, gas, water, electric and the list goes on and on. Money is easy to spend and hard to make. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply stupid. They are living in a bubble.