- Joined
- Oct 12, 2005
- Messages
- 5,697
- Reaction score
- 235
The office that once housed a dot.com company valued at £20m is now just a storage closet filled with toilet products and a vacuum cleaner.
"It's a very surreal experience. It's actually quite depressing," says Benjamin Cohen, returning to the place where 10 years ago, aged just 17, he became the UK's first dotcom millionaire - at least on paper.
Early in the year 2000, the bubble was about to burst on the first wave of internet start-ups.
The Nasdaq index of technology shares peaked in March 2000 before losing 80% of its value in two years - about $5 trillion in paper wealth.
Mr Cohen says that back then "the value of a company could be based on how much positive publicity you got."
Adding "e-" or dotcom to a company name could dramatically alter its share price
His company, JewishNet - a religious community site - was reported in the national newspapers as being worth £5m.
This turned out to be his own father's estimate, based on a similar site's more official valuation.
But the headlines spread and suddenly Mr Cohen was thrust into the spotlight.
Mr Cohen was touted as the "first millionaire teenage dotcom success story" by Jon Ronson of the Evening Standard.
The London Jewish News offered to invest in the company and a partnership was formed.
It was a time when adding "e-" or dotcom to a company name could dramatically alter its share price, a time when investors were willing to risk vast sums of money on young computer-savvy entrepreneurs with little more than idea and a catchy company name.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8505260.stm
"It's a very surreal experience. It's actually quite depressing," says Benjamin Cohen, returning to the place where 10 years ago, aged just 17, he became the UK's first dotcom millionaire - at least on paper.
Early in the year 2000, the bubble was about to burst on the first wave of internet start-ups.
The Nasdaq index of technology shares peaked in March 2000 before losing 80% of its value in two years - about $5 trillion in paper wealth.
Mr Cohen says that back then "the value of a company could be based on how much positive publicity you got."
His company, JewishNet - a religious community site - was reported in the national newspapers as being worth £5m.
This turned out to be his own father's estimate, based on a similar site's more official valuation.
But the headlines spread and suddenly Mr Cohen was thrust into the spotlight.
Mr Cohen was touted as the "first millionaire teenage dotcom success story" by Jon Ronson of the Evening Standard.
The London Jewish News offered to invest in the company and a partnership was formed.
It was a time when adding "e-" or dotcom to a company name could dramatically alter its share price, a time when investors were willing to risk vast sums of money on young computer-savvy entrepreneurs with little more than idea and a catchy company name.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8505260.stm
