It's 2001 and I just found this article sitting deep in the bowels of our servers. It's fascinating to me where the investment in a "factory" led us. It's been quite a while since we were a software company and now, as it has been since 1998, we publish magazines on the Internet. We've increased our bandwidth 12-fold (in effect digging a much wider river) and we reach a tremendous number or readers. Sometimes it's cool to go back and see where it all began. So, with that in mind, read on.

If this were 1897 instead of 1997, we'd be building a mill instead of a software company.

It was the dawn of the industrial revolution.

As business owners with an eye towards investing in the future, we'd have examined our business goals and growth objectives and determined that an investment in factory facilities would be a good foundation for future growth. We'd have looked for land on the edge of a raging river so that we could tap into the generating power of the river, and we'd have built structures that would stand the test of time and would meet our production needs now and into the reasonable future.

Fast forward 100 years. The raging river is the Internet. It is the dawn of the Internet revolution.

Our factory on the edge of the raging river is our site, this site, on the Internet.

Eighteen months ago, www.component-net.com was borne. We bought some time on a provider's site in California and for a mere thirty bucks a month, had an Internet presence--an amazingly active one considering the bandwidth limitations that occur when you share processor and feed with lots of other site owners.

I've been on the net forever...I had Arpanet accounts when I was 16 and was doing FTPs with alacrity back in the seventies. We lived off e-mail. We moved files everywhere. But when the net became ubiquitous, when even my uncle got an e-mail address, the whole model changed.

In the past eighteen months, our entire business model has changed. The distribution channels have become irrelevant. In 1988, I begged to get into Egghead and MacWarehouse. Now, it just doesn't matter. We used to send out tens of thousands of catalogs and direct mail letters. Now it just doesn't matter. We used to limit the distribution of bug fixes because we couldn't afford to mail out all those disks. Now it just doesn't matter. It could take customers outside the US weeks to get copies of our software (and don't even get me started on customs!) Now, it just doesn't matter.

The Internet changed our world.

One word of caution: we're a software company and most of our customers are self-described propeller-heads. The Internet is ideal for us. If you own a furniture company or a deli, it might not be such a huge win.

Yes, our Internet site transformed the company. But there were limits to what we could do. We couldn't really run much in the way of special software and certainly no custom-back end processes. Site performance was a constant issue with our customers since there were tons of other users on our ISP's machines. And when something went wrong on those machines, we were at the mercy of some very overworked people three thousand miles away.

So, six months ago, we made the strategic decision to invest in a factory on the edge of a river. We decided to buy our own feeds and build our own site, for real, here at Component. Between the servers, the software, the cabling, the installation, the monthly feed costs, and everything else, it was a gigantic investment. But we fully expect to recoup that investment many times over.

You can bet that when that ninteenth century entrepreneur put down hard cash, he lost sleep at night wondering if it was the right thing to do. And while I'm sometimes a bit concerned, I'm way less concerned that that guy in 1897. And I'm also way less concerned than many other present-day Internet entrepreneurs. That's because we know from eighteen month's experience that this site is well worth it to everyone. And it will be well worth it to you.

On the day we turn this new site on, there will be lots of wonderful things for you to do: FileFlex Radio is our new audio program for FileFlex users; there are interactive conference and support areas for both FileFlex and ODBC Gateway users; we've added a multimedia jobs classified ads area where you can find talent or seek work; and we've added something we have very high hopes for: the free computer clearinghouse where deserving people in need of technology will be able to connect with companies and individuals getting rid of old hardware.

There's lots more to come and plenty to see. So stop in, hang out, and join our community.

Update from 2001: FileFlex eventually got sold to a former employee, the free computer domain FREECOMPUTER.COM got sold for a pleasantly, unreasonably high amount to BUY.COM (and our GEEKJOBS.COM domain got sold for an even higher, even more pleasantly unreasonable amount to another company), and, although we had no idea where it would lead at the time this essay was written, we eventually began using the factory to produce magazines -- and the rest, as they say, is history.

Copyright (c) 1997 by David Gewirtz. All rights reserved worldwide.