Reminder of past mistakes or harbinger of future doom?
TIM FAULKNER — A Wall Street Journal article discussing Lala, the online music play with many different strategies (CD exchange, online radio, album downloads, etc...), and its maverick founder Bill Nguyen reveals that the executive keeps the most enduring icon of the dot-com bubble on his desk: the Pets.com sock puppet. Nguyen intends it as a protective talisman to remind him of what can go wrong, but with an expense-laden business (they expect to lose $40 million over the next two years) that requires massive growth of the consumer base to break even, one worries that the business concerns are a little too similar. That the socket puppet talisman is acting more like the tiki that brought the Bradys such bad luck in Hawaii than as a nostalgic motivator.