Sex, Fame and Insolvency: a pioneer talks about the beginning of the New Economy

Written by Thomas Pfeiffer, on Webevangelisten, October 12th 2010.
Translated by Ulrike Anderson. See the original article in German
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He says of himself that he is the “owner of a good haircut.” But what’s underneath the hair style? What does the advertiser, blogger and author Sascha Lobo, who has a few more fictional careers, believe in? What drives him?

His debut novel “Strohfeuer” takes us back to the New Economy, when you could still make money just by using a browser or adjusting pixels in Photoshop 5.0.

Porn parties, floating dance floors and meter-high cocktail ice blocks – for everyone born after 1980: was the New Economy at the turn of the century really as extreme as you describe in the book? Or did you exaggerate a little for dramatic effect?

– Yes and no. In “Strohfeuer” there are more fictional passages than you might guess. All the parties, for example, are completely made-up; any similarities are coincidental because I didn’t want to research whether or not there had really been meter-high ice blocks somewhere. On the other hand, in the crucial things, the New Economy was even more extreme than I describe. You can research the topic “met@box” or Biodata, two companies listed in the New Economy. Compared to them, the two main characters in the book are almost naive – and it was much worse. What’s also tragic is that, with the New Economy, the internet hit German society for the first time. The result was a lot of negative opinions, due to the dramatic losses of the time, for example of many large publishing companies and also of private individuals who lost their savings. The New Economy destroyed the image of the internet.

The ad agency employees in the book work all weekend (“What do you mean you’re not coming until eleven on Sunday?”) and let their extensive overtime be paid for with invitations to eat pizza. You’re a member of the SPD online advisory council, which is/was traditionally closer to a trade union. Did the trade unions, the [left party] SPD, miss the chance to join the young Heiko Tänschels [main character in the novel] during the New Economy?

– When the New Economy died out, I was sued three times by trade unions because we had to let employees go. And I mean had to, because we were only a few weeks away from bankruptcy. The trade union lawyers’ implacability and barely existent desire to communicate, who, in their own interest, incited the employees to sue, were a means, in my opinion. On the other hand, the cost of the desperately necessary flexibility cannot be passed on to the employees and that was the case during the New Economy.
However, connections have certainly been missed before and after, especially by the trade unions, if you consider their attitude towards self-employed individuals and sole proprietors. And yet, I still hope that the trade unions become a stronger part of the solution and don’t emphasize their inertia in order to satisfy their trade worker clientele. The SPD is currently on a better path, because parties grasp what the people want more quickly than you’d think. But, unfortunately, not as quickly as you’d hope.

At the end of the book Thorsten and Stefan meet to hatch new plans. What did you personally learn from the collapse of the New Economy? What would you do differently today than ten years ago?

– I would do almost everything differently, other than the enthusiasm with which one approached projects back then. Sometimes I do miss that, but it seems to be showing up again in these last two or three years. I learned that above all you have to make a decision when you don’t think you have any other choice. And that there are people behind such gold-rush situations that are barely capable of learning or don’t want to be. In many respects, the New Economy was a preliminary tremor for the financial crisis of 2008/2009.

Editor’s note: This article was shortened by E-Blogs with its author’s permission. To read the full article (in German), click here.