Stories about: Kozmo

Ask IT managers about job prospects in the technology sector and they will say it has remained dismal for the past 12 months.

One block south of my office, a sign perches in the shadow of the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building: "DoubleClick Welcomes You to SILICON ALLEY." Erected years ago by the first New York tech company to go public, the billboard became a "New Economy" totem, featured in scores of magazine photo shoots and breezy news broadcasts about entrepreneurial wunderkinder. After the crash, it morphed almost instantly into a kitschy relic -- an artifact from a time that New York techies simultaneously scorn and wistfully recall.

Two hundred seventy-three Seattle dot-com workers lost their jobs on Friday, Jan. 19, 2001. Paul Beard, manager of technical services for FizzyLab Corp., a now defunct developer of online search technology for media companies, was one of them. More than four months later, Beard, 39, is still unemployed.

Some online grocers are ringing up big sales as Thanksgiving approaches, while others are picking up the phone and calling liquidators to help them dispose of their assets in going-out-of-business sales.

Starbucks Corp. yesterday said US$58.8 million in losses from its investments in four e-commerce ventures nearly wiped out the operating profit that the coffee maker earned from its core retail business during the company's fiscal fourth quarter.

A year ago only Internet companies could afford to acquire other Internet companies. A Yahoo Inc. could afford to spend US$5 billion on another dot-com, whereas traditional brick-and-mortar companies were left in the dust, under pressure to make an Internet play yet unable to afford to buy into the market.

A discrimination lawsuit that charges the Kozmo.com Inc. online delivery service with avoiding predominately African-American neighborhoods in Washington has been moved out of federal district court.

If you think you've seen more than the average number of headlines about executives vacating their posts, you're right.

I'll admit it: The thought of some fresh-faced twentysomething becoming a dotcom millionaire after only a few months of sweat equity (if you want to call taking meetings at Starbucks Corp. for 18 hours a day sweaty) makes me more than a tad envious. Actually, it really ticks me off. I've been in the same industry for more than a decade, working my way up the ladder to a rung just below middle management. During that time, I've managed to put aside a tiny, yet consistent pretax chunk of every paycheck in the hope that one day I will not become a burden to my kids. Then along comes dotcom fever and the advent of the 90-day millionaire. The world pegs me as a loser because I've spent the bulk of my career with one company and my net worth doesn't surpass the GNP of Guatemala.

Urbanfetch.com Inc., a New York-based online personal delivery service, has laid off 2% of its New York workers, after cutting 18 workers in its London offices several months ago.

When it comes to launching an Internet company, the wackier the name, the better