Tuesday - May 9, 2000

Competition Intense for MIT's $50,000 Start-Up Prize

According to the Boston Globe:

"There are few better ways to launch a company in Boston than to compete in the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Win it, and you could be like Direct Hit, the Internet search firm that took first place in 1998, and was acquired by Ask Jeeves for $506 million this year. Lose it, and you could be like Akamai Technologies, a finalist that same year. It didn't win, place, or show, but Akamai, which expedites the delivery of Web content, was worth more than $15 billion on the day it went public last November.

In addition to teaching MIT students about building a company, the event has become something of a festival of early-stage financing. This year's student teams started getting peppered with e-mails, phone calls, and term sheets from investors last month, when the 48 semifinalists were announced..."

Click here for the full story. [Link no longer active]

Nickelodeon Closes Ecommerce Site
Nickelodeon has closed its Red Rocket ecommerce site. Customers trying to access the site from May 5 on were greeted with the following message:

"Red Rocket is closing operations effective 4PM EST. May 5, 2000. If you have already placed an order it will be fulfilled by Wednesday May 10, 2000.

If you have any questions about your order please call (888)794-8080 or e-mail RedRocket@customerservicemail.com

Thank you for your patronage."

"It's no secret that e-tailing is a tough business that increasingly demands size and scale to be successful," a Nickelodeon Online representative told a CNET reporter. "We felt that Red Rocket on a standalone basis did not have size and scale to be successful."

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