FOOL'S EYE VIEW
Five Great Things About The Fool

By David Berger
December 20, 2001

It's been over four years since Bruce Jackson and I started the Motley Fool in the UK. Back then, the Internet was the nineties equivalent of a hippie commune – all flowers and doing stuff because it was cool and upsetting the grown-ups with our brash, young ways. Not surprisingly for something which was a popular mass movement with elements of counter-culture about it, the Motley Fool UK was a breathtakingly amateurish operation. That was charming, too. We had a lot of fun, some sleepless nights at the audacity of what we were doing (well, I did anyway) and a feeling of awe that we could and would change the world.

We were in the vanguard of a revolution! Not many people can ever say that and I feel supremely privileged to have been part of it. Now, though, I am leaving the Motley Fool and heading back to the world I came from – medicine. Before I go, I'd like to leave you with some thoughts about what makes the Motley Fool great, so bear with me, this ancient Internet veteran, tears piping at my eyes as I recall past battles fought.

Here are my top five things about the Motley Fool:

1. Its people

I mean both the people who work and have worked for the company and those who give it so much life – you, the users. What makes the Internet good and bad are the people who use it. After all, it's a communication medium and is therefore nothing more than a reflection of society. In the Motley Fool, we see reflected much of what is good in people: altruism, humour, kindness and a sense of fair play. That's been nice to be a part of.

2. Its attitude

Depending on how you look at it, the Motley Fool has been a leader in openness or has been part of the general, society-wide trend towards greater transparency. Whichever it is, and I think both are true, The Motley Fool's attitude of constructive criticism and cutting through the blather and blarney is a special one which finds resonance with very many people. It has been much mimicked, but there is, and can only ever be, one Motley Fool.

3. Its focus

The Motley Fool is a useful place, unlike much of the web. You can get stuff done here. It helps people sort out their financial issues. This is the result of years of evolution and heartache about what the web is for, what the Motley Fool is for and how best we can help people. Take a look at our new ISA Centre. Nifty, hey? It helps you decide what you need and helps us earn money. The hippie dreams of the early years remained just that, dreams, and we've had to grow up and make our own way in life. Like any growing up process, that has been painful at times, but ultimately good for us. (Gosh, don't I sound just like your dad?)

4. Its brand

'Branding' has been one of the over-used late nineties buzz words. Marketing gurus write books about it and build consulting businesses off it, but there's a lot of truth in what they say. Some brands are very powerful and have an emotional hold on people. The Motley Fool is one such brand and that's because it has an intellectual heart and stands for some kind of moral principles. All credit to the Gardner brothers for their flash of inspiration in dreaming up the Motley Fool, with all that it implies.

5. It's still here

Yep, I thought I'd leave the most important until last. It's still here and doing quite nicely, thank-you very much. That's quite a statement about an Internet company which is older than almost every Internet company you've ever heard of, except AOL (NYSE: AOL), but including Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). The Motley Fool has been extraordinarily innovative in finding ways to equate customer and economic value (in English that means 'flogging stuff to the punters'), but at the moment we've gone full circle and have a revenue stream primarily dependent on advertising. Since most of our competitors have closed or merged and we are a market leader with a reputation to match, we have benefited from the general downturn. That means not only are we still here, but our future is as secure as anything can be in this world, which is lucky because there's still much for us to do.

For me, though, it's almost over, four and a half years of my life. It's been wonderful, the party to end all parties. There'll never be anything like it again.

Thank-you, everybody, from the bottom of my heart.