Byline: Dina Berta and Kris Hudson News Staff Writers
John Fischer was on a summer vacation, visiting his mother in Wisconsin, when he lost his job.
Wholepeople.com in Thornton, a lifestyle-oriented Web site he helped build from scratch for Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Inc. was being sold to its rival, Gaiam.com in Broomfield.
Gaiam.com hired a few employees from Wholepeople.com but had no need for the other 111. They were let go, Fischer, vice president for marketing, among them.
Fischer, 35, a married man with three young children and a mortgage, sounded like he was in good spirits by the time reporters caught up with him in Door County, Wis.
``If there is one thing that I've learned, and I've been in the dot-com industry for five years, the dot-com business is volatile and uncertain,'' he said.
Fischer was undoubtedly buoyed by the fact that the day the doors slammed shut at Wholepeople.com, recruiters and other companies called him. He had about 10 job leads on his voice mail.
Using the word volatile to describe the dot-com industry is an understatement. Since the bloom faded from e-commerce after April's market downturn, Internet companies have either downsized or folded completely.
In the Denver area alone, at least 11 dot-coms have trimmed staff or closed. According to a recent national survey, at least 122 dot-coms have laid off nearly 8,000 workers since December. About 20 percent of those 122 are now out of business.
Dot-com turmoil has more people looking for jobs, but the demand for Internet workers remains high. With Colorado's low unemployment rate, most of those laid off are likely to find other positions. But while the fast pace of a dot-com business still allures, job seekers are becoming more cautious in selecting their next employers. And Internet companies are changing their strategies to attract people, now that stock options are less of an enticement.
Internet companies are trying to tell their story better to job candidates, said Sam Brown, a high-tech recruiter for Denver-based Solution Partners recruitment firm.
They sell their creative work environments, relaxed dress codes, opportunities to telecommute, the chance to gain great work experience quickly, Brown said.
He advises job candidates to ask good questions and research a company before making a decision.
What's the company's funding situation? How much does it have, and how long will that last? And where is the money coming from - private investors or venture capitalists? Venture capitalists are more likely to research a company before investing in it, Brown said.
What's the experience level of upper management? The company may have a good idea, but is there a viable market for its product?
If stock is offered, find out how many shares are outstanding. The impact of 100,000 shares is different if there are 20 million shares or 10 million shares outstanding.
Dot-com employees should prepare themselves financially, as well.
Fischer took off on a monthlong vacation with his family before making a decision on a job offer.
``If you enjoy the chaos of start-ups, you need to be prepared,'' he said. ``Whether that means saving money every month or negotiating a severance package that's reasonable upfront.''
Having savings can also help job hunters slow down and wait for the right offer, said Rusty Thulin, director of staffing and recruiting for FastIdeas, a Westminster incubator.
As investors in dot-coms have become more cautious since April, so too have dot-com employees, Thulin said.
``I'm finding there are several parallels. The wariness of investing in dot-coms has translated to people feeling the same way about investing their careers,'' he said. ``The biggest thing is that the romance of the startup is lost; it's kind of like innocence is lost.''
The end of the romance comes through in the stories of people who lost their jobs at dot-coms.
Epidemic Marketing
Roughly 60 people lost their jobs when e-mail marketer Epidemic Marketing closed its Denver headquarters in June. Those cut loose were so distraught they threw a party.
``What was funny was that on the day it happened there wasn't anybody who seemed to have any anxiety,'' said James Wallen, an early Epidemic hire who served as director of national accounts when the company folded. ``They came down and said, `That's it; the merger won't happen, and we don't have money to pay you for the last couple of weeks.' There was no one who was even angry.''
Epidemic ran out of cash, thanks in part to an ill-conceived Super Bowl ad that burned $1.6 million of the company's $4 million in financial backing. When a last-ditch merger fell through, Epidemic's financiers pulled the plug.
Employees marked the occasion with a keg party at a loft owned by two of Epidemic's former vice presidents. The techies knew they could find work the next day if they wanted it. Wallen received numerous job leads, but he opted to take a vacation to Minneapolis, Las Vegas and Amsterdam because he couldn't be sure of when he'd get another chance.
``I definitely want to stay involved in the dot-com / Internet / high-tech industry,'' he said. ``It's an addictive industry because there are no policies and procedures. It's just first-to-market: Who can get there, and who can do it best? It's unrestrained, as opposed to any other industry.''
Scott Brown also took a vacation. The former Epidemic chief information officer quit a few days before Epidemic's collapse. He has fielded several inquiries and job offers in the weeks since. Last week, he considered several technology jobs in the Denver area.
Sometimes, Epidemic's failure becomes a discussion topic during Brown's job interviews.
``Everybody's curious, but I think it's really true right now that people learn as much in failure as they do in success,'' Brown said. ``Not to say that Epidemic was a failure, but you learn a heck of a lot from the experience, the creativity and the challenge of a start-up.''
Mobilize Inc.
Dave Shulkin was caught off guard last week.
Three and a half months after he left his job at ChannelPoint to take an offer from Mobilize Inc. in Colorado Springs, Shulkin found himself heading out of Mobilize's doors for the last time. Fourteen other employees had the same fate.
Mobilize, which offers software for extending the reach of companies' enterprise software systems to employees in the field, trimmed about 10 percent of its staff to comply with the terms of its latest round of financing. Such moves are common these days, as companies adjust to tighter capital markets.
``It highlights a point for me,'' Shulkin said. ``You can't do much (research) on these private, venture-backed companies. It's just hard. You can't really look at their revenue numbers. You just have to trust them. I was convinced . . . that Mobilize was a place I'd be stable at for at least a year.''
By Wednesday, two days after Shulkin's departure from Mobilize, he had completed two phone interviews and scheduled an in-person interview for Thursday. He used the Web to advertise himself and received a dozen calls on Wednesday alone as a result.
Shulkin's advice to other potential victims of the ``dot-bomb'': build a nest egg for emergencies and prepare yourself emotionally for the possibility.
``Depending on how financially ready you are for this, it's hard to balance taking a quick offer that might not be the perfect offer or (waiting for) the right fit,'' he said. ``It depends on whether you have $20,000 in the bank to live off or if you're living paycheck to paycheck. I'm lucky enough that I can do this for a couple of months.''
Plasticsmart.com
Patrick Leonard took a harder hit than most. Not only did his company close, but he also had to do the closing.
Denver-based Plasticsmart.com, a business-to-business software company that catered to the plastics industry, closed its doors in late June after its prospects for gaining $6 million to $8 million in first-round financing dried up. Leonard, Plasticsmart's vice president for product strategy, founded the 10-employee company in January with a colleague.
``I noticed that the other people there who were vested were upset to see it close,'' Leonard said. ``But I think it was different as a founder, having put the business plan together and being emotionally vested in it. It was probably a little tougher.
``But I think it was hard for everybody,'' he said. ``You get this team of great people together, everyone's excited and the whole world is lying out in front of you - it's all opportunity. Then all of the sudden, you come to this point that it's over, and it's a bit surreal. On the other hand, everyone knows they can get another job, and that lifts a lot of the stress.''
After Plasticmart's closure, Leonard, a veteran of Andersen Consulting and J.D. Edwards & Co., took some time to regroup. Since then, he's reviewed five to 10 job possibilities and found his experience in starting his own company has helped him size up potential employers.
``As a perspective employee, it's important to view it from the perspective of an investor, because you really are,'' said Leonard, who hopes to accept an offer by the end of the month. ``I think it is important to . . . make sure that this place where you're investing your time is going to give you a good return.''
KickStart.com
When startups trim their staffs, the marketing people are usually the first to go. Moz Mirbaba knows this.
After leaving KickStart.com in a round of June layoffs that cut the struggling company's staff in half, Mirbaba found that many Internet startups simply weren't hiring marketing executives anymore. When cash flow is squeezed, marketing budgets often collapse first.
Mirbaba, a former marketing manager at KickStart, took several weeks off to contemplate his next career move. He decided to avoid the instability of the Internet startup scene, instead seeking opportunities with established high-tech companies.
In July, Mirbaba took a job as a national brand manager at AT&T Broadband in Arapahoe County. KickStart shut its doors earlier this month.
``I had a long time to actually think about my experiences there,'' he said of KickStart, a Web portal for school groups and youth teams. ``I wouldn't have traded it for the world. The thing that's really disappointing is that a lot of those people are very young and have nothing to lose, and you tend to bond with those folks.
``You're there late at night, early in the morning, working weekends. You pour your passion into the job. So when you see at the end of the day that it didn't work out, it hurts you a little bit.''
KBKids.com
Eric Gertler was laid off once before. Sybase cut him loose in 1997 after five years of service. In May, he experienced another layoff. This time, he got pink-slipped from Denver-based online toy seller KBKids.com.
``It was very different,'' said Gertler, KBKids' former director of finance. ``With Sybase, it was my choice. It was a large company, and I could have taken another job if I chose to relocate. I decided I just didn't want to do that. Sybase had a very generous offer, and they worked with me on getting my vacation (pay).
``With KB, it was less organized. The interesting thing about their severance package is that it was paid out like regular payroll. If you found a job, you were required to tell them so they could stop the severance payments.''
Gertler signed an offer letter within one week of his departure from KBKids. He's now the controller at online billing company Solant in Longmont. He says layoffs are still as difficult to accept now as they were years ago, but the stakes aren't as high.
``I think today it's less about `Am I going to be able to pay the mortgage?' and more about `Am I going to be able to find a situation that I like?' That, by definition, is less scary,'' he said. ``And there's certainly far less stigma associated with it.''
When Kersten Webb lost her job at KBKids, she had another lined up the next day. She became a buyer for Achieve.com, an education Web site that planned to roll out an e-commerce component. However, two weeks ago, the company changed direction, and Webb was once again out of work.
``I think I'm going to take a break from dot-coms for a while,'' said Webb, is pursuing a job with a Fortune 500 company.
CAPTION(S):
Color Photo, Photo
John Fischer of Longmont plays in his back yard in July with his children, from top, Izzy, 4, Jesse, 2, and Izzy's twin brother, Joel, 4. Fischer recently lost his job as Wholepeople.com's vice president for marketing. The same day, he received several phone calls from recruiters and other companies. By Steve Peterson / Special to the News.
CAPTION: John Fischer schedules meetings on his computer at his Longmont home while talking to his wife, Xan, in July. ``If there is one thing that I've learned, and I've been in the dot-com industry for five years, the dot-com business is volatile and uncertain,'' Fischer says. By Steve Peterson / Special to the News.
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