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Where Are They Now?

Things were just a little too, uh, stable. With over fifteen years in the business, I craved uncertainty, chaos, and yes, instability. I certainly found it at a dotcom startup, Telekomnet.com. After taking a year off - highly recommended if your marriage has a solid foundation - to reflect upon this midlife crisis, I took the plunge at the beginning of this year. Since I was a founder and first editor of Stable Times and my career took an unusual turn, Gina thought a brief piece about all this might be of interest. Hah!

My experience editing not only Stable Times but also a Fidelity client newsletter and another for investment actuaries got me thinking about publishing as a possibility, web publishing in particular. Unless you are techie, the smaller companies are looking more for a track record in managing projects, managing people and running a business unit, and are not so hung up on specific expertise. With the tight job market, I somehow was able to overcome all of these shortcomings.

Telekomnet is an online networking and telecommunications destination. Our site has industry news, articles, white papers, audio interviews with industry professionals as well as an e-commerce component, reselling networking gear such as routers, switches and bandwidth. I serve as editor for the ISP (Internet Service Provider) Community, our bandwidth marketplace: www.telcosearch.com. I write some pieces but mostly recruit contributors from around the industry as well as work with freelancers. One of my more interesting responsibilities is doing taped phone interviews with industry executives, which are put up on our site as streaming audio files. The first round of venture capital funding was received in November; a second round will hopefully come through by the end of the year and an IPO, fame, glory and riches in 2001. This is all very uncertain. With industry and market shakeouts occurring almost monthly, stable it's not. But it is an interesting fast-paced environment with a lot of incredibly talented people - a sure cure for complacency.

We added a 401(k) plan a few months ago with about ten mutual fund options from various companies ranging from aggressive equity and international to bond and money market. There is no stable value option, and the consultant told me it's really not even on the radar screen. A good future topic would be why this is so for startups and the consultants who advise them.

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