Dot-Com Reality

Online companies were among the biggest losers on Wall Street this week as election uncertainty added to downward pressure on stocks. CBS News Correspondent Jeffrey Kofman reports one of the results is the dot-com business reality is a lot less virtual than it once was.

Playing pool at the office was the stuff dot-com dreams were made of. A twenty first century workplace, where none of the rules of twentieth century work apply.

"It's not your traditional nine to five job," says web designer Azher Ahmed.

From the beginning shoes, and desks, were optional. Work and play seemed to be in perfect harmony in the world of digitalwork.com, a two-year-old Internet company chasing the dream of being the one-stop shop for small businesses looking for online services.

Last spring the offices were brimming with optimists like Dave Glines; brandishing stock options waiting for that public offering that would bring instant riches and early retirement.

"Who knows maybe we go public, we drum up millions of dollars and employees. I can play music the rest of my life," says Dave Glines, web site editor.

Randy Grudzinki, Senior VP of Marketing believes his company will succeed. "I think this company will be bigger than amazon some day."

But that was then and this now. The mighty amazon.com is worth a quarter of its former self. Digitalwork had to shelve its dreams of going public when the Internet bubble burst last April. That crash was a day of reckoning for the company and for the entire dot-com industry.

Welcome to the brave new reality of dot-com life. For digitalwork founders Rob Schulz and Craig Terrell the obsession with corporate growth is gone and the bottom line is now, the bottom line.

When asked if the world is a little bit more sober about dot-com investments than it was a couple of months ago, Shultz said, "Sure, I think that at the end of the day this will be very positive for our industry. It's a sign of maturity."

So the hip new headquarters are history, the company's public relations firm is gone and so are more than forty employees, almost a third of the staff.

Rob Schultz, CEO, digitalwork.com says, "Now we're focused on building a strong and profitable company."

That means searching for more capital to keep the doors open and the computers humming. A recent infusion of fourteen million dollars should give the company another year to prove itself. This is not where employees like Dave Glines expected to be eight months ago.

"I think there was a slight disappointment," says Glines.

Part commerce, part cult, the dot-com dream hasn't been dashed. It's just not the fairy tale it once was.

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