Build It and They Will Come

摘要

Nobody rode the bubble harder and farther than VeriSign Chief Executive Stratton Sclavos. In 2000, with a mere $100 million in revenue from issuing security certificates to e-commerce sites, Sclavos used Verisign's wildly inflated stock price to buy Network Solutions for $20 billion, giving him control of the dotcom and dot-net Internet address system. Investor euphoria drove the company to $40 billion in market value. But the dot- com party ended, and Verisign's stock fell 98%. Sclavos had to write off $17 billion from the Network Solutions deal. But instead of apologizing or retrenching, Sclavos bet the farm again, this time on telecom, in the teeth of the telecom depression. He spent $2 billion on electronic number directories and caller-ID-type services, sure that telephone and data networks would converge and come to rely on an outside vendor to manage billing and connections.