Investment companies are lining up to give money to cyberspace entrepreneurs

TO anyone who had an idea for the next Internet gold mine while surfing the Web last night, here is some good news: a banker somewhere in Hong Kong wants to give you millions of dollars.

In fact, even if the idea turns out to be the next empty gold mine, a banker may still want to give out the cash. In the past few months huge sums of money have become available for Internet entrepreneurs - and there are not enough of them to use it.

'I have people in my office every day who are seeking to invest in I-Quest,' says the firm's chief executive officer Anthony Blass. His firm helps hotels get their rooms wired for mobile, Internet-aware executives, and he receives a barrage of inquiries from people wanting to invest in his firm.

'It is a big change from six months ago,' says Mr Blass.

Over at Alibaba, a business-to-business auction site which has just raised US$5 million (HK$38.8 million) from a consortium led by Goldman Sachs, chief operating officer Joseph Tsai says: 'We had a lot of people come to our door unsolicited. They were eager to talk to us.' Ian Henry, president, international at China.com, reminisced that a few years ago he and his partner Peter Hamilton used to sit in their office the day after paying their staff wondering how on earth they would next pay their staff in a month's time.

Now, in part thanks to the US$80 million flotation of China.com which ignitied interest, Internet entrepreneurs are finding cash coming at them from every angle.