Whoah!  Waaaaay late with the monthly letter this time.  How come?  Would you believe that on my scheduled Monthly Prez Letter writing night I attended a financing closing party with some VCs where we pounded down several dozen Margaritas among us and nearly got thrown out of the Four Seasons lounge?  Escaped to our room and quickly brought the contents of the mini bar in a pillow case out on a two a.m. limo ride on a school night?  The story gets worse.  But enough of the excuses.  Here's the scoop.

By the end of March, more than 25,000 humans from around the world had visited iTulip.com.  That's an annualized rate of 150,000.  Heck, the web site www.itar-tass.com of the Russian news agency TASS (that's CNN in English) has only gotten 299,301 new visitors since July,1,1998.  The avalanche of press continued:

• Washington Post - March 25, 1999
• Canadian Online Explorer (CANOE) - March 18,1999
• STERN Online - March 17, 1999
• Third Age - March 15, 1999
• The Independent - March 9, 1999

The most shocking event was the blatant attempt by Larry Ellison (Oracle, Corp.), Mitchell Kertzman and David Roux to muscle in on our racket selling Internet company parody stock online.  Their wannabe iTulip.comÙ site is the unimaginative heyidiot.com.  Esteemed colleague and CEO of Hubnet Communications, LTD Adam Caper alerted us to the offense.  A letter was quickly dispatched to The Industry Standard where it appeared in the March issue under the heading, TAKE MY COMPANY, PLEASE

The Free iTulip.comÙ Bogus Stock Certificate contest was a huge success.  More than 500 visitors participated and in the process we proved that the theory of efficient markets is rubbish.  For reasons we can't explain, most of the winners were from Germany.  Go figure. 

We were psyched that so many visitors thought our interview with Alan Greenspan was for real.  A convincing ruse. 

Not everything went according to plan.  The iTulip.com flashing tulip market crash warning on March 2 turned out to be a false alarm.  The Dr. Ed Yardeni Y2K A-OK Sticker was a bust, so we took it off the market.  Oh, well.

Speaking of Y2K, our resident expert will serve up a piece later this month to give you the heads up on this non-event.  Looks like enterprise software companies, Y2K consultants, and computer hardware makers are running out of Y2K business eight months before the day they're supposed to run out of time to fix Y2K bugs.  Also, this month, look for a piece in Fast Company.

Well, that's probably more than anyone's gonna read.  So, until next month, keep both hands on the wheel and remember, you are a unique person, just like everyone else.  And if you haven't bought an iTulip.comÙ Bogus Stock Certificate already, it's about time, isn't it?  I know you've been meaning to.  Thanks!

Sincerely, 

Arnold Greenspatz 

The Prez 
iTulip.com