Ten years after bubble burst, the net economic triumph
Marc Simoncini has enriched the right time. He managed to sell its Internet portal iFrance Vivendi before the Internet bubble broke. "I sold it very cheap, 182 million, but nearly half in Vivendi shares, says he. And the course is spent in a few weeks from 100 to 8 euros. I lost enough money to tell me that I could not stop working. So I founded Meetic. "
Ten years ago, world capitalism was attending the breakup of one of the most famous bubbles. That of. Com (dot com in English), these values of the "net economy" that even baptized "new economy". At the time, only 350 million people are connected to the Internet in the world against more than a billion and a half now. But in early 2000, analysts and fund venture capital are already there. They overestimate the ability of start-ups to become profitable and give them carte blanche.Just then an idea, a business plan presented on Powerpoint to convince venture capitalists to invest tens of millions even before he won any customer.
No matter, since a tsunami will occur: the bank branches will close in favor of online banking, consumers will no longer do their shopping in supermarkets and choose the sites of e-commerce …
At that time, Philip Collombel is responsible for web development at Carrefour. "A few months before the bubble burst, the group's leaders had planned to invest hundreds of millions of euros in this area," he recalls. Finally, all the ambitious ideas have been put in closets. "We threw the baby out with the bathwater," Regrets Philippe Collombel.Ten years and two owners later, Carrefour has announced its intention to buy a player in online commerce to catch up on the subject. Ooshop.com The site, launched at the time – now renamed Crossroads – sells little more than a large supermarket.
But the food is one of the few sectors where e-commerce has not taken a prominent place. The use of the Internet has indeed developed a massive scale, even if it took longer than expected.With their billions of dollars in profitable sales, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay are still there, joined by thousands of businesses, net of pure players or converted traditional players.
SNCF leading e-commerce
Who would have thought that the station would become the leading French online business? "Many of the ideas of 1999-2000, when they arrived too early, have proven today in the field of e-commerce, social networks, games, e-book, said Jean-Bernard Schmidt, the capital firm Sofinnova Venture Partners. The innovations were ready, the public has taken longer than expected to join. "
A French start-up, Cytale, then had the idea of the eBook, then disappeared after failing to make the model profitable. Posthumous revenge, last Christmas, is that Amazon said it had sold more than Kindle, its electronic reader that works paper.The email service Caramail, founded by the French pasionaria Web, Orianne Garcia and his associates, had established itself as number one in France, before disappearing off the face of Hotmail, now in the fold Microsoft. Meanwhile, Garcia and his partner Alexander Ross became pioneers in the distribution of contact lenses on the Internet.
The online business has not emptied the stores as had been predicted a decade ago, but he does not know the crisis, due to annual growth of 25% for two years in France. One in three adults regularly purchases on the Internet. Against all odds, clothing and footwear join books, high-tech and travel head of the most purchased. The Swedish site Boo.com, one of the most resounding failures of the bubble, was not entirely wrong. Today, sales, and other privees.com Showroomprive.com Rise in fashion D?griff?e.Zebank sank body and soul but Boursorama Bank, now a subsidiary of Societe Generale, prosperous and all banks now offer a one stop online.
Other pre-bubble phenomenon: lastminute.com has seen its share soar 40% on the day of its IPO in spring 2000 before we lose it again quickly and half to be sold to the U.S. in 2005 Saber.
This crisis has served as a "rite of passage, forming a large number of leaders," said Philippe Collombel who now heads the fund Partech International Partners. For Marc Simoncini, now head of his own investment fund, Jains Capital, the bursting of the bubble has had one virtue: "enhance the experience of failure."