Like Sheep to the Slaughter
The full story is a bit more complicated than this, of course, but the fundamentals do not change. Entrepreneurs were often not unwilling adopters of the get-big-fast strategy. As a group, entrepreneurs are optimistic and in a hurry. So when their financial backers and potential underwriters urged them to go for it fast, many entrepreneurs were happy to do exactly that.
After Amazon.com got an 18-month lead on its old economy competitors, VCs and entrepreneurs were alerted to a potential opportunity in every other product category.
This was the game, and entrepreneurs quickly perceived it. The bubble had created perverse incentives. For example, when online retailers spent many times the amount of their bricks and ...
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