The coolness factor

摘要

Over five years, FORTUNE has dubbed 125 outfits "Cool Companies." A look back offers lessons for investors hoping to score big gains from technology. First: Trying to pick winners on the Internet is investing at its most extreme. There's that one high-school photo—you know the one— where you're the living, breathing definition of cool. You're dressed in your favorite funky psychedelic polyester shirt, bell-bottom pants that go out to there, and a haircut inspired by John Travolta, circa the Welcome Back, Kotter years, Where's that picture now? Likely buried in a box in the attic after that day when your kids got hold of it and passed it back and forth, snickering, "You wore that?"