Or is it just a negative hype?
The truth is to make your dream come true out of the media machine, you need to find the right balance between what it costs you to build your portal, the service you offer and what revenues are likely to be generated. That is the only way to survive the mood of depression that has set in some quarters and ensure that you do not miss out on the four fold expansion in B2C business that is forecast to take place by the year 2003.

You need to take a closer look to see why some of the launches have failed. They failed because of poor conception, design and faulty business practices. Of course a wave of acquisition and forced mergers, courtesy the venture capitalists too brought down the enthusiasm in the B2C market place.

But all these should not distract anyone who still wants to go ahead. He needs to do a reality check and use relevant benchmarks. Holding one's head in the cloud and living in the Ivory Tower and hoping for some Angel promoter to come and buy you out is only a prescription for disappointment and losing your money. Gone are the days when you can put up a portal, monetize it and walk away to your bank.

While starting up your portal in the market place within the limited time span that the opportunity window is important, you still need to watch your steps. There is no room for rushing about, spending freely, hiring in a hurry or go into ill-thought out launch campaigns. In a world market with internet frenzy many portals were launched with high costs for operating and for customer acquisition. Customer retention costs consumed much money. End result - the B2C players are found themselves soon drowning in red ink within two years of launch. The honey moon period with the VCs have also come to an end. The victim in this scenario is the entrepreneur, whose concept is good but his revenues are farther down in the longer horizon.

These are but a process of walking up the learning curve. The B2C entrepreneur has to reinvent himself. Keeping costs low, and making your channels more efficient are the starting blocks. This model fits in excellently even for those who are adopting B2C models for those business houses that try to add sales to their brick and mortar retail plays. But such portals would do well to rope in the related issues of inventory management, order processing, demand fulfillment and customer service. The discovery of the wheel helped Stephenson launch the locomotive or railway engine driven by steampower in in 1825. The aeroplane, the power plant turbine and the auto industry are all derive their power from the wheel. The internet engine too has a similar power, which will be difficult to imagine at this point of time. Internet is all about flying on the wings of your imagination to conceive of newer ways of starting a business idea. Your guide posts here should be innovation, customer experience and not leastprofitability.

So for the B2C entrepreneur it is not time to give up. He must look down the road several years from now. But he must also earn to how to survive until the B2C market starts ballooning. And at present count the B2C business is expected to multiply four times from the current level by the year 2003. It would be a $160 billion business. So it is not time to give up, but brace up.