Ten years later, 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 players converted traditional flexible cash advance payments