The Age (Auzie): LookSmart Bounces Back Brom the Dot-Com Crash

Profile in the Australian zine The Age of founders of LookSmart (also Auzies) who tell how the firm has staid alive through the dot-com bust. CEO Damian Smith explains:

…[A]bout two years ago, we realised that the business we were in did not have a sustainable future….

We decided that the main value of the medium was not in banner ads but in the search results…. The mind-shift was to realise that we were a direct marketing medium, not a brand medium….

It has taken us two years to get the revenue back to where it was at the height of the boom. The growth rate is now faster and it is profitable growth. It cost us a lot to rejig our business, but we now have stronger margins. It's a lot more recession-proof.

The story fails to note that this is the same strategy many other search tools also chose in that same time frame, and LookSmart remains 2nd tier in that category after Google and Overture. LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK) recently reported its 2002 Q3 results: revenue of $23.8 million, a 35% rise over Q3, 2001; EBITDA profit $3.8 million (a record, more than double same period 2001); GAAP net loss $0.5 million.