“You mean I need a phone line too? Your ad didn’t say anything about needing a phone line. I’m going to the district attorney. Don’t even try to refund my money, you fraudulent bastard.”

I kid you not. People even asked for refunds when, on reading our installation instructions, they realized they needed a computer!

Sure, sure, you can deal with one or two nontechnical people who need help. But what about when thousands start calling? More tech support. More money. Soon the good users can’t get through and they’re canceling too.

By now it’s costing $80 to sign an account as opposed to the original $10. So many people are quitting up front that the average time you keep an account is down to eight or ten months as opposed to forever in the beginning. This means you’re only making a $64 margin on the average signup it cost $80 to get. You’re losing $15 for every account you sign. Insane. But the business is growing. Wall Street is happy. They think each account is worth $500 and they’re paying. Until suddenly someone spreads a rumor about you or the romance for Internet stocks is over and the price collapses. Or both. Welcome to January 1997.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the Internet business itself. The hundred thousand or so accounts you’ve successfully gotten on line are still paying you $20 a month. It still only costs $12 or so to service them, even with a now national network and tech support. In fact, once they’re on, they don’t even call tech support too much. You could actually make a lot of money servicing this base and just pushing for referrals and corporate business. You’d just have to disappoint Wall Street and stop growing. Or start growing more in the telecom area where you’re really focused anyway. See, it’s not all that complicated.

Before starting to rub out other people, though, you gotta set priorities. You gotta start with your own finger and take a 50 percent pay cut for the year. This makes it easier for all senior managers to accept a six-month pay freeze, and it makes everyone feel a little better before the real pain, when heads really start to roll. It doesn’t do a whole lot for you, though. To you it feels like you’re hacking off your arm.

Like a condemned prisoner who wants to enjoy his last meal before facing the agony of the chair, there was one firing I wanted to do first. One I sort of enjoyed. The pompous investor relations guy, the one who was always talking to Wall Street and telling us what they wanted us to do. At first I offered him another position. (He didn’t take it. Who wants to deal with mere mortals once you’ve talked face-to-face with the Masters of the Universe?) But the important thing was the position was gone. From now on we’d answer to the bottom line, the invisible hand, not the Street.