NetMart.com Web Hosting Celebrates Ten Years

NetMart.com, a privately held Florida based web hosting company is celebrating 10 years in business next month. Many can consider 10 years in any business an achievement.

With a billion dollar market up for grabs, web hosting is probably the most competitive of all web-based services. With the barriers to entry virtually non-existent, everyone from the kid next door to Yahoo and IBM has thrown their hat in the ring.

One of the first entrants however was a small company, with a mere $1000.00 of capitalization called NetMart.com. A trio of recently graduated university students formed the company and on December 1, 1994 opened for business by connecting an ISDN modem to a desktop computer in the basement office of their parent's home.

Recalls founding partner Norman Goldberg; "When you think about it, it was a really crazy idea to try and run this out of a basement office with no money to speak of. To us it was a shot in the dark. We had no money, and built the business on simple word of mouth.

Three years of steady growth gave way to new offices and a new data center all funded from revenue earned by the company. "We always ran the company like a for profit business. We ran a tight ship and continue to do so. We never bought into all this ‘new economy' hype and when the Venture Capitalists came knocking on our door in late 90s, we turned most of them away because we just could not see how the company would survive their expansion plans.