Etopian

Was at a party yesterday when someone asked me what happened to etopian... the Bubble 1.0 Internet venture founded by Ben, Dan and myself. I hadn't even thought about it in a while, but for the record things turned out ok. Not spectacular but ok.

Sold part of the business (the investor community 'concept') to Blaze International (ASX):BLZ. Blaze was then coming off the reflected glow of its spectacular flame-out Freekick and failed to commercialise the opportunity. Probably for the best.

The other part (generally known as 'the good bit') ended up, effectively, in a joint venture between AMP and DirectAdvice (a pioneer in online financial planning). AMP launched (if you can call putting the service up with no marketing and making it really hard to find and register on their website launching) the DirectAdvice online financial planning tool (which I maintain was really, really good) to underwhelming demand. Ultimately DirectAdvice was sold and the Australian version of the service shut. Etopian did ok out of it though.

Founding / running a (very junior) dot.com was a weird trip. First I felt like a rock star (in the heady days of 98/99) then it was hard work and no money and not getting anywhere, then the industry crashed and burned, then belatedly it sort of turned out ok but in the meantime I had no idea where my career was going. Very weird.

In any case, etopian was a very cool name for a company. Not that I can take any credit for the name.