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September 2000 - Editing

3/3/2015

 
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Neoforma.com and Novation Reach Target Ahead of Schedule. 79 Hospitals Representing $2 Billion in Purchases Sign Up
Neoforma.com, Inc. and Novation today announced the addition of 39 new healthcare facilities, bringing to 79 the number of hospitals signed to purchase supplies through Marketplace@Novation, the online purchasing solution powered by Neoforma. This figure exceeds Neoforma’s goal to have 56 hospitals signed onto Marketplace@Novation before year end . . .

September 7, 2000, Neoforma Press Release
E-Biz
. . . PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has launched the Healthcast 2010: E-Health Quarterly [says]: “A shakeout is in store for some 50 companies that now market e-procurement services in the U.S.” . . .

Materials Management in Healthcare, September 2000
It had started so simply. Or rather, in the beginning, it had appeared to be so much simpler than it was.

There was Neoforma. That was about all that could be said about it. Nobody knew what a Neoforma was. Neoforma was not like anything else in particular...
One step at a time, we struggled to define Neoforma. For nearly three years, there was nothing much like Neoforma. Then there was one other company like Neoforma—then another—and another.

Our competitors had begun to define themselves by how they were like Neoforma, and how they were unlike Neoforma. Each new company had spliced themselves into the increasingly complex landscape, until there were more than a hundred of them, fighting for attention.

Then a few ran out of money. And a few merged together. Some lost interest when the rewards were less grand than they had anticipated. A few simply disappeared, as soon as the light stopped shining on them.

Many tried to merge with us. As we evaluated each one, layer upon layer flaked off at our touch. We poked and probed each insubstantial mass, but seldom found anything solid inside.

When it became clear to these companies that we weren’t willing to pay a premium for bluster, they flocked to our less-discriminating competitors. Sometimes that worked. The distributors’ dotcom merged with the manufacturers’ dotcom. Other mergers made for some great press releases.

When there were only a few survivors left, everything became much clearer. We all knew who and what was real again. It was almost like starting over, only not nearly as fun.

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    About Me

    I am an architect, writer, and serial entrepreneur. 

    I'm also a dichromatic tritan, which means I'm one of between 150 and 1,500 people in the US with this rather extreme form of colorblindness. I write about how colorblindness has profoundly affected my life's path on my other blog: dichromat.com

    My surreal journey as co-founder of Neoforma (formally NASDAQ: NEOF, later acquired by GHX) is the basis for Starting Something, a multiple award-winning book, used in many biz school entrepreneurship classes:

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