In the early hours of tomorrow morning, bidding will close in the initial public offering of dotcom search engine Dozomo.
Like Google, Dozomo is holding its public sale in an eBay auction. But unlike Google, Dozomo's 'new and innovative paradigm' is not likely to make the front pages of the world's financial papers, and its handful of backers are not expecting to become instant billionaires.
If you have never heard of Dozomo, do not worry - until last weekend nobody else had heard of the company either, because it did not exist. Dozomo calls itself the 24 Hour Dotcom: it was conceived, planned, funded, staffed, coded, beta-tested, launched and put up for sale in just a night and a day.
As dotcoms go, this one is fairly short on features. It lets you search any search engine simply by typing the name of your engine of choice, followed by your keywords. You can also add new search engines to its database, and download a browser plug-in to search from your own machine. The dearth of features is probably understandable, considering the enterprise took just 1,440 minutes to develop from concept to initial public offering (IPO). In the dotcom boom, many businesses were planned over lunch but most took months and millions to build.
As for funding, Dozomo does not charge for searches or membership, it has no online store or commercial affiliations, and it does not even carry advertising. On the face of it, this sounds like a pretty poor business plan. But at the rate Dozomo's auction is going, it looks as if we are seeing not just the fastest dotcom IPO since the frenzied days of the late 1990s but one of the most profitable.
Dozomo's sole source of income so far has been investments from shares sold to enthusiastic angel investors, most of whom had no idea what they were investing in. In that respect, at least, this was just like the good old days.
Twenty-four angels bought 49 per cent of the company, paying about 10 euros (HK$93.64) for each 1 per cent share. Like all good dotcom launches, the initial investment round, conducted via Internet Relay Chat and Paypal, was oversubscribed. Midway through the project, chief executive Adam Wern announced on Dozomo's IRC channel that he was already turning away investors, saying 'people were just sending money without checking it [sic] there are shares available!' This really did sound like the good old days.