Bring Out Your Dead! As the dotcom boom goes up in smoke, meet a guy who's profiting from the fire sale.
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You could call him a vulture. Or perhaps Mr. Death. In pastinterviews, Jim Nesfield has referred to himself a "modern-daypirate"; he told us that he's a "Machiavelliancreature of the dark." Whatever you call him, pray hedoesn't call on you-especially if you're an entrepreneurwith a dotcom company.
Nesfield's business, based out of his home office in NagsHead, North Carolina, is called Cardinal Internet Workout Group.That sounds amicable enough. But as Nesfield, 42, puts it, he worksin the "distressed and bankrupt field." He hunts for weakInternet companies and convinces investors to buy the firms andeither restructure the companies or sell their most lucrativeassets, which admittedly is nicer than crashing and burningcompletely unnoticed. Meanwhile, Nesfield takes "about 20percent of the upside" and has created an organization worth$10 million.
When you go after these dying dotcoms,what exactly are you searching for?
Nesfield: We go looking fordeals on liquidations. If we think there's an asset we want,we'll come in and try to get the whole piece. Then we cansource out pieces we don't want at cost to get rid of them.We're not necessarily hot on furniture and computers. It'snot about the furniture: It's about intellectual property andthe customer lists.
Do you feel any remorse or pity for thefailing companies?
Nesfield: Nah. In theexperience I've had with these failing companies, there are alot of brilliant, gifted people, but they tend not to be the guysrunning the companies-they're the guys working for thecompanies. A lot of the people who ran those companies are crooks,outright liars. [Many others were] misinformed and got caught up inthe dotcom "enthusiasm," if you will. They still thinkthey're going to become billionaires. And I'm not sayingthey shouldn't be, either. I mean, I think it'd be great ifevery 21-year-old kid had a Ferrari, personally. But the bottomline is, the world doesn't work that way.
Your image is that of a modern-daypirate, which you obviously embrace. Is there any way to do yourjob without that image?
Nesfield: I work for myinvestors. I want my investors to know I love them. I get up in themorning, and I live and die for them. If you had guys running thedotcoms who had that kind of passion for investors-forexcellence-you wouldn't have all this [bankruptcy] stuff.
