Have you heard of Blue Mountain Cards? It all started back when ecards became big in the 1990's. It seemed like everyone thought somehow giving away ecards was going to be a business model. What you must remember is that advertising revenue models were seen as very acceptable back then. This is a difference with today's focus on real revenue. However, there are some painful similarities in web 2.0 to this idea of building big applications that will make money only from advertising.

The ecard space is a funny one. The business model is essentially one where you are killing another business model, the paper greeting cards space. It seems like the classic case of doing something through technology that was previously manual. But I don't think it's that simple. An ecard is not the same thing as a paper card. Paper cards come from a store and require you to mail them. An ecard comes from a company like Blue Mountain Cards and is completely electronic. In this way, it's a real product transition. So we are actually seeing technology change the wants and desires of the buyer here. This is not unique, just look at tvs, video games or any other electronic based market.

So what exactly did blue mountain cards do that was so special? I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Blue Mountain Cards had a serious lead going into the game. They planned well.. The top management at Blue Mountain Cards seemed to know that the ride would not last forever. So Blue Mountain Cards management decided to sell the company while everything was still red-hot. What a move that was.. Looking back, there are many things I wish I had done differently.

So now it's 2008 and what is a business model like Blue Mountain Cards still doing around? One view is that the original builders of the business picked an once-in-a-lifetime period to exit the business and made an unprecedented amount of money.. However, these were experience people who were also making a serious move in a serious industry. This is not a small business. Regardless of their underlying financials, this business made a name for itself in a multi billion dollar business space. I am betting that this is why they are still around today. They built a brand and have a name worth something. The part this is far from any text book case study is how they exited at the height of the crazy valuations. I guess that's where a little luck goes a long way.