It's now been 15 years since 1999, a year that has since become synonymous with crazy Internet excess. The first Internet boom began several years earlier with an overhyped IPO and took a while to reach its febrile climax. Of course, it all crashed down much more quickly.

    Today, the lingering memories of the time -- extravagant rooftop parties, metoric IPOs, and massive wealth creation (at least on paper) -- feel at once legendary and quaint. With Twitter trading at 70 times revenue and costs of living rising in tech centers, the debate rages on over whether another period of irrational exuberance is nigh, if not already upon us.

    Just as every boom must have its bust, every bust will see its share of survivors. Many of the hot startups of the late 1990s are still alive and kicking, especially in networking (Akamai (AKAM), Juniper (JNPR)), business software (RedHat (RHAT)), and the consumer web (Angie's List (ANGI), Shutterfly (SFLY)).

    More notably, other veterans of the first generation of web startups have not only survived, they continue to be big online brands with 11-or 12-digit market caps. Whether the Internet industry is heading for another boom and bust, these five companies offer lessons on how to build a startup with the power to endure.

    -Amazon (AMZN):Stick to your vision no matter what, but fine-tune it with data. Jeff Bezos's annual letters to shareholders haven't changed much over the years. In 1997, he said Amazon would build shareholder value over the long term. But to do this he would "extend and solidify our current market leadership position" and "focus relentlessly on our customers."

    Even through the bust, Amazon did just that. Long-term shareholders have rewarded this stubborn adherence to an original vision with a $185 billion market value. But Amazon wasn't too stubborn. It obsessively tracked data on shoppers, how they used the site, what resonated with them to expand and enhance its long-term goal. The focus was so relentless, Amazon may know its customers better than they know themselves.

    -Netflix (NFLX):Serve a need that won't go away, but may change with times. Like Bezos, Reed Hastings had a long-term goal. "When there's an ache, you want to be like aspirin, not vitamins," he told Fortune in 2009. "Aspirin solves a very particular problem someone has, whereas vitamins are a general 'nice to have' market."

    Netflix may not cure any aches; it's more like it scratches an itch. But it's an itch that never goes away. Watch movies and TVs in a low-cost, simple way. Even when Netflix was dominating in DVD rentals, however, Hastings had plans for a streaming-video service once broadband was fast and cheap enough.

    At the same time, Netflix has shown it can nimbly adapt to its users' demands. The company made an early -- and shrewd -- shift from a by-the-disc rental fee to a monthly subscription that was more popular. More recently, Hastings branched into original content to increase subscriptions at a time when skeptics questioned whether a move would be too costly.

    自1999年疯狂的互联网热潮至今已经15年了。伴随着这之前几年第一次互联网热潮的是过度热捧的首次公开募股，这阵热潮在持续一段时间后达到了顶峰。当然，它垮掉的速度要更快。

    如今，那个时代的记忆仍然挥之不去——奢华的天台聚会，迅猛的首次公开募股和大量财富的创造（至少是纸面上的）——让人感觉既传奇又古怪。随着Twitter的市场估值达到收入的70倍，以及科技中心的成本不断攀升，关于另一个非理性繁荣的时代是否即将到来、抑或已经到来的争论日趋热烈。

    正如繁荣终有萧条的一天，萧条中也总会有幸存者。20世纪90年代末炙手可热的初创公司中，仍有许多至今仍然生机勃勃，尤其是在互联网【例如阿卡迈（Akamai）、瞻博网络（Juniper）】、商业软件【例如红帽（RedHat）】和消费者网络（例如Angie's List、Shutterfly）等领域。

    更引人注目的是，第一代网络初创公司中的老手们不仅仅成功地存活下来，而且成为拥有百亿或千亿市值的大型品牌。无论互联网行业会不会迎来下一次繁荣和萧条，就如何建立一家经久不衰的初创公司而言，下面这五家公司都给人们上了一课。

    亚马逊（Amazon）：无论如何，坚持愿景，不过同时也要根据数据来调整愿景。杰夫•贝佐斯写给股东的年度致信多年来一直没有什么变化。1997年，他表示亚马逊会从长远的角度为股东创造价值。为了达到这个目标，他将“延伸、巩固我们目前的市场领先地位”，同时“坚持以顾客为本。”

    即便在萧条期，亚马逊也坚持了这两点。在公司对最初愿景的坚持下，它的长期股东获得了回报，亚马逊的市值如今已经高达1850亿美元。亚马逊坚定却不顽固。它不懈地追踪顾客的数据，了解他们如何使用网站，什么能让他们产生共鸣。借此，亚马逊得以实现了扩张，同时提高了长期目标。亚马逊对顾客的关注从未间断，或许比起对自己的了解，他们对顾客的了解还要更胜一筹。

    奈飞（Netflix）：服务于一个不会消失、却可能会随着时间而变的需求。与贝佐斯一样，里德•哈斯廷斯有着长远的目标。他在2009年告诉《财富》：“（人们）出现疼痛时，你会想着扮演阿司匹林，而不是维生素。阿司匹林可以切实解决一些人的特定问题，而维生素则是个大体上‘可有可无’的市场。”

    奈飞也许不会治愈任何疼痛，它更像是在给人挠痒。不过人们的这一种痒永远不会消失，那就是：用较低的价格、简单的方式来观看电影和电视。即便在奈飞统治了DVD租赁市场时，哈斯廷斯也有计划：一旦宽带网变得足够快速和便宜，就开展流媒体视频服务。

    与此同时，奈飞也证明自己可以灵活地满足用户需求。这家公司很早就开始明智地从赚取碟片租借费转向更流行的每月订阅费。最近，哈斯廷斯将业务扩展到了原创内容，增加订阅量。尽管怀疑者认为这个举措的代价过于昂贵。

    -eBay (EBAY): Adapt to evolving interests of your users, even if you anger some others.It's hard enough coming up with a business model that appeals to the masses. It's even harder to find one that endures longer than a fad. eBay's auctions were a post-boom fad that helped the stock rise through 2005. Then the fad began to fade.

    CEO John Donahoe undertook a multiyear retinkering of the site, quietly gearing it toward fixed-price sales so that consumers who tired of auctions slowly returned to the site. The changes, however, favored bigger, more trusted retailers prompting a vocal backlash among sellers who felt betrayed by the site. Donahoe chose to weather the criticisms to maintain the turnaround.

    In some ways, Donahoe was pushing eBay's marketplace away from the freewheeling idea of auction anything to embrace the security, reliability, and seamless ease of use adopted out of necessity by online-payments pioneer PayPal, which eBay bought in 2002. The reliability, however, was aimed at consumers. PayPal has its own litany of complaints from retailers who use it.

    -Yahoo (YHOO): Establish a deep network of big customers and advertisers. Yahoo's CEO post-bust was Terry Semel, a longtime Hollywood executive who was widely respected, but who failed to lead the company into the era of social networks. But Semel did two things that have helped Yahoo remain a big player in the consumer web.

    Semel established early on a close relationship with deep-pocketed advertisers. In the same way that Facebook (FB) is courting big advertisers into mobile ads, Yahoo was the company that brought them onto the web at all. That gave the company a head start that prompted Google (GOOG) to buy DoubleClick to strengthen its hand in banner ads, and the early relationships have helped Yahoo keep growing today.

    Even with that head start, however, Yahoo has struggled to stay relevant in online ads. The second smart thing Semel did for Yahoo came in 2005: helping the company buy a $1 billion stake in then-fledgling Alibaba.com. The returns on that investment have shored up Yahoo's profits ever since and allowed it to return some of the largesse to Yahoo's own investors.

    In other words, Yahoo's continued success is one part innovation, two parts lucky investments. Which brings us to the final lesson.

    -Priceline (PCLN): If all else fails, buy your way into a better business. Priceline was a dotcom era darling because of its original name-your-own-price business model. It turned out to be modestly popular but nowhere near as transformative as the company once dreamed.

    Instead, the real reason Priceline's stock has outperformed any of the above four companies over the past decade has more to do with its 2005 purchase of Booking.com and, to a lesser extent, its 2007 acquisition of Agoda. Both made Priceline a leader in hotel bookings in Europe and Asia, respectively -- two underserved markets.

    Americans may know Priceline from William Shatner talking about the name-your-price service. But the reason Priceline is a $60 billion company is because of a couple of key acquisitions that provided handsome returns. They may not have transformed how we travel, but they changed Priceline from a dotcom casualty to a thriving company in 2014.

    eBay：作出符合用户兴趣的改变，就算会惹恼其他人也在所不惜。要想出一个吸引大多数人的商业模型是很难的。而找到一个经久不衰，而不仅是一时风靡的商业模型更是难上加难。eBay的拍卖功能就在后繁荣时代风靡一时，使得 在2005年股价上升。不过，之后这股热潮就开始逐渐消退了。

    公司首席执行官约翰•多纳霍花费了几年时间来对网站进行调整，默默地把它改造成为定价销售类的网站，以此挽回对拍卖感到厌烦的顾客。然而，这个调整更倾向于规模更大、信用更高的零售商，而另外一些商家则认为被eBay出卖了，于是发起了强烈的抵制。多纳霍选择了忍受批评，以保证转型的进行。

    某种程度上说，多纳霍推动eBay与随心所欲的拍卖概念渐行渐远，转而拥抱贝宝（PayPal）所开创的安全可靠、方便快捷的支付技术。贝宝正是eBay于2002年出于这种需要而收购的无线支付领域的先行者。然而，可靠性只是对顾客而言。贝宝也饱受零售商用户喋喋不休的抱怨。

    雅虎（Yahoo）：与大型客户与广告商建立深厚的联系。雅虎在萧条期后的首席执行官是特里•塞梅尔。他曾长期在好莱坞担任高管，颇受尊敬，但却未能将雅虎领入社交网络时代。不过塞梅尔的两项举措帮助雅虎在消费者网络领域继续占据优势地位。

    塞梅尔很早就与财力雄厚的广告商建立了亲密的联系。与Facebook热切邀请大型广告商进入移动广告市场类似，雅虎把它们带进了网络市场。雅虎因而有了一个良好的开端，也促使谷歌（Google）收购双击公司（DoubleClick）以强化横幅广告业务。而这种早期的亲密关系也帮助雅虎发展到了今天。

    雅虎虽然抢得了先机，却依然难以紧跟在线广告业务的趋势。2005年，塞梅尔为雅虎做了第二件明智的事，他帮助公司给当时初出茅庐的阿里巴巴（Alibaba.com）投资了10亿美元。自那时起，投资的回报增加了雅虎的利润，让它能够慷慨地回报对雅虎自身的投资者。

    换句话说，雅虎持续的成功部分缘于创新，而更多则缘于幸运的投资。由是带给了我们最后一个启示。

    Priceline：如果所有努力均告失败，那就通过收购来改善公司。Priceline最初推出了买方自主定价模式，借此一举成为互联网时代的宠儿。事实证明这种模式尽管较为流行，却不具备公司设想的变革意义。

    Priceline的股票在过去十年中的表现之所以优于以上四家公司，很大程度上是由于它在2005年收购了Booking.com，在2007年又收购了Agoda。这两次收购分别让Priceline成为了服务水平低下的欧洲与亚洲市场酒店预订领域的领袖。

    也许从威廉•夏特纳宣扬买方自主定价服务开始，美国人就已经知道Priceline了。不过Priceline之所以成为一家市值600亿美元的大公司却是由于这两次带来大量回报的关键收购。它们也许不能改变我们旅行的方式，却让Priceline从互联网时代的受害者一跃成为2014年蒸蒸日上的公司。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正