"The days of the pure-play company are not over, but they're the exception to the rule," contended Matt Miller, chief operations officer of Internet Venture Works. He believes that the way to find gold in the Internet hills is to leverage more value from prosperous bricks-and-mortar (BAM) companies with loyal existing customer bases. By helping these companies to establish a strong Internet presence, Internet Venture Works hopes to build value for its investors.

"If your New Economy strategy isn't focused on driving business back to existing locations, it probably won't be effective," Miller said. His firm works with BAM companies to essentially drive more customers through their doors by harnessing the power of the Internet.

Brick and mortar firms (BAMs) and fence-sitters have treated the web like a fax-on-demand box — a novel way of satisfying formulaic inquiries and fulfilling low-level support requests.

Colman chose the word "lots" because there was no other way to describe "tradeable bits of property". He thinks this is symptomatic of the lack of development in the property markets. "What do you call small tradeable parts of direct property? They are not shares in a company or units in a trust." MCS considered other words, including bams (bricks and mortar securities), dips (direct investment in property) and sasis (syndicated and securitised investments).